Albert Jan Kluyver developed the first general model of cell metabolism in both aerobic and anaerobic microorganisms, based on the transfer of hydrogen atoms. He was a major exponent of the "Delft School" of classical microbiology in the tradition of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723). Outside Delft, he also drew on the legacy of Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), Robert Koch (1843-1910), and Sergei Nikolayevich Winogradsky (1856-1953).

Born in Breda, the Netherlands, on June 3, 1888, Kluyver was the son of a mathematician and engineer, Jan Cornelis Kluyver, and his wife, Marie, née Honingh. In 1910, he received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Delft University of Technology, but immediately shifted his focus toward botany and biochemistry, winning his doctorate in 1914 with a dissertation on the determinations of biochemical sugars under the tutelage of Gijsebertus van Iterson, professor of microscopic anatomy. In 1916, on van Iterson's recommendation, the Dutch government appointed...