Christiaan Eijkman

Christiaan Eijkman (b. Nijkerk, August 11, 1858 - d. Utrecht, November 5, 1930). Dutch physiologist. He is known for being the discoverer of the importance of vitamins in the diet, identifying vitamin B1 for the first time. He was awarded for his work with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929.

Semblance

In 1875 he began his medical studies at the Military Medical School of the University of Amsterdam, earning his degree and becoming a military medical officer. From 1879 to 1881, he was an assistant in physiology at that university. In 1883 he moved to Sumatra and, two years later, to Java, where he was infected with malaria, which caused him to return to Holland. Already in Europe, he works on aspects related to bacteriology with Robert Koch at the University of Berlin.

During his stay in Java (from 1886 to 1897), he discovered that chickens fed unhusked rice developed polyneuritis (a disease similar to beriberi), while those that ate it with the shell remained healthy, reaching the conclusion that that the disease could be due to a lack of certain unknown substances, which would later be called vitamins. This research work, the first of those carried out on dietary deficiency diseases, later led to the discovery of vitamin B1 (thiamine).

For these discoveries, he was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in Medicine, shared with Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins.

Back in his country, between 1898 and 1928 he was a professor at the University of Utrecht. He was the first president of the Dutch Society for Medical Microbiology and carried out its well-known fermentation test, by which it can be easily determined whether water has been contaminated by human and animal defecation by E. coli.

Eponymy

• The Institute of Molecular Biology Eijkman.
• The asteroid (9676) Eijkman.
• The lunar crater Eijkman bears this name in his honor.