Christiaan Eijkman (Nijkerk, August 11, 1858 - Utrecht, November 5, 1930) was a Dutch physician and pathologist whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of vitamins. Together with Sir Frederick Hopkins, he was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Although Eijkman had been sent to Indonesia to study beriberi, the discovery of the cause was accidental. Wikipedia
Christiaan Eijkman was born on August 11, 1858, at Nijkerk in Gelderland (The Netherlands), the seventh child of Christiaan Eijkman, the headmaster of a local school, and Johanna Alida Pool. nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1929/eijkman-bio.html
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Christiaan Eijkman. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Eijkman
From 1879 to 1881, he was an assistant of T. Place, Professor of Physiology, during which time he wrote his thesis On Polarization of the Nerves , which gained him his doctor's degree, with honours, on July 13, 1883. That same year he left Holland for th nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1929/eijkm...
