Born in the Netherlands in 1858, Eijkman received his medical degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1883, then went to Germany to study under the famous bacteriologist, Robert Koch. Encouraged by Koch, in 1887 Eijkman joined a commission sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to investigate beriberi--and began the work that was to make him famous.

At the time, beriberi was a widely prevalent disease, characterized by polyneuritis, the kind of nerve damage that causes numbness, paralysis and, in many cases, death. Because Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease had already led to so many successful cures, physicians now assumed that all diseases must be caused by microorganisms. The scientific commission sent to investigate beriberi, therefore, was primarily searching for its causative organism--an organism they failed to find. Disappointed, most of the group returned home in 1887, but Eijkman remained behind to serve as director of a new bacteriology...