The Dutch physician and biologist Christian Eijkman (1858-1930) was a pioneer in the study of the biochemical basis of health and in the recognition and study of vitamins.

Christian Eijkman was born to a schoolteacher in Nijkerk on Aug. 11, 1858. He took his degree in medicine at Amsterdam in 1883 and then trained as medical officer for the army of the Dutch East Indies. His first official position was as assistant to the Dutch commission to study the scourge of beriberi in Batavia. The commission returned to Europe in 1887, but Eijkman remained as director from 1885 to 1896. In 1898 he was called to the chair of hygiene and forensic medicine at Utrecht. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands in 1907.

Eijkman arrived in Batavia at a time when there had been many severe outbreaks of beriberi. Beriberi is characterized by ascending paralysis and cardiac symptoms and...