Christiaan Eijkman (1858-1930)

Awarded the Prize “for his discovery of the antineuritic vitamin.”

Dutch anatomist and bacteriologist. Eijkman was born on August 11, 1858 at Nijkerk in the Netherlands. He received a medical degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1883 and served as a medical officer in the Dutch East Indies from 1883 to 1885. He then worked in Berlin and in 1886 returned to Java to continue his research. Eijkman was Director of the Medical Laboratory and the Javanese Medical School in Jakarta. In 1898, he became Professor in Hygiene and Forensic Medicine at Utrecht. Eijkman died on November 5, 1930, at Utrecht.