Eijkman, Christiaan (redirected from Christiaan Eijkman)

Eijkman, Christiaan (krĭs`tyän īk`män), 1858–1930, Dutch physician. He was head of the Pathological Institute of Batavia and later (1898–1928) professor of hygiene at the Univ. of Utrecht. His work at Batavia on the cause of beriberi led to the isolation of the antineuritic vitamins. For this he shared with F. G. Hopkins the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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Eijkman, Christiaan

(born Aug. 11, 1858, Nijkerk, Neth.—died Nov. 5, 1930, Utrecht) Dutch physician and pathologist. While seeking a bacterial cause for beriberi, he noticed a resemblance between a nerve disorder in his laboratory chickens and that seen in beriberi. He eventually showed that the cause was their diet of white rather than brown rice, but he believed the disorder was caused by a toxin even after it was shown to be due to thiamin deficiency. His work led to the discovery of vitamins and earned him a 1929 Nobel Prize, shared with Frederick Gowland Hopkins.