Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch physician and pathologist who demonstrated that beriberi is caused by poor diet. He discovered that beriberi is a vitamin deficiency disease.
He was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He shared the prize with Sir Frederick Hopkins.
Christiaan Eijkman was born on August 11, 1858 at Nijkerk in The Netherlands.
In 1875, Eijkman became a student at the Military Medical School of the University of Amsterdam. He received a medical degree in 1883 with honors by written thesis ‘On Polarization of the Nerves’.
Later he served as medical officer in the Dutch East Indies in the year of 1883-85.
Eijkman was a director of the Geneeskundig Laboratorium (medical laboratory) in Batavia from 1888 to 1896 and during that time he made a number of important researches in nutritional sciences.
Because of his fundamental studies on fowl and the rice diet, he was knighted by Queen Wilhelmina with the Order of the Dutch Lion in 1920.
Biography of Christiaan Eijkman
