Christiaan Eijkman

Christiaan Eijkman ( born August 11, 1858 in Nijkerk, † November 5, 1930 in Utrecht ) was a Dutch physician, pathologist and hygienists.

He studied in Berlin and conducted research in 1895 in the group of Robert Koch, who later became Nobel Prize winners.

Eijkman showed in 1897 that produced by feeding polished rice in chicken beriberi. This vitamin B1 deficiency effect could be overcome by the feeding of the silver skin of the rice. Together with his colleague Gerrit Grijns he discovered by the vitamin B1 ( thiamine).

In 1898 he became a professor at Utrecht University, where he taught until his retirement in 1928 and 1912/13, served as rector.

For his discovery of vitamin antineuritic he received in 1929, together with Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The molecular biological Eijkman Institute ( Lembaga Biologi Molekuler Eijkman ), in which he made his discovery, was named after him in 1938 and is today a renowned research institution in Indonesia.

According to him, the Eijkman test a microbiological method to differentiate Escherichia coli from other Enterobacteriaceae was named. The test can be combined with the IMViC test to have, among other things faster interim results as at IMViC alone.