Albert Kluyver

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Dutch microbiologist and biochemist. Kluyver was the second child and only son of the mathematics professor Jan Cornelis Kluijver (born 2 May 1860, Koog aan de Zaan - 31 December 1932, Leiden) and Marie Honigh (1859- 31 December 1928, Leiden). After finishing the HBS in Leiden (1905), he went to the Delft Technical University to become an engineer in chemical technology (1910). From 1911 to 1916 he was an assistant on the Lab for Microscopic Anatomy under G. van Iterson jr. On 15 May 1914 (3h PM) he graduated cum laude at Delft with a thesis on "Biochemische suikerbepalingen" (Biochemical sugar measurements). He worked in Vienna under prof. H. Molisch and went in 1916 to the Dutch East Indies as an adviser to the Netherlands Indies Government on the promotion of native industries. In Bandoeng he managed an Laboratory in the oil industry. In 1921 he was appointed as the successor of the famous ("father of virology") botanist and microbiologist M.W. Beijerinck in Delft. He would held his post in Microbiology till his death in 1956. He hesitated to accept the job, as he was not a microbiologist, but a chemist. On 18 January 1922 he held his inaugural speech at the Delft Technical University. He said in Dutch: " .. fate has taken me to far-away countries, and did not Goethe, in his "Wahlverwandtschaften", say: "Die Gesinnungen andern sich gewiss in einem Lande, wo Elefanten und Tiger zuhause sind"? It is true that I encountered neither elephants nor tigers in nature ; but the emancipating influence exerted by living in a foreign environment has not in the least worn off.' In 1926 Kluyver and Hendrick Donker published the influential scientific paper "Die Einheit in der Biochemie" ("Unity in Biochemistry") in which they pointed to the common metabolic pathways and laws of thermodynamics that were shared by many species. They investigated the breakdown of substances by microbes, but the principle also applies to mammals. To express this he used the the aphorism: "From elephant to butyric acid bacterium – it is all the same. He stated that bacterial taxonomy should not only be based on morphology, but also on metabolism. On 18 May 1926 he became a member of the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen (KNAW). From 1947 to 1954 he was their Chairman. He became a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London on 1 May 1952. He is now considered the father of comparative microbiology and in 1953 won the Copley medal of the English Royal Society for this. Personal He was partly named after his fathers brother Albert Kluijver (4 December 1858, Koog a.d. Zaan), who was professor of Letters at the University of Groningen. He married on 29 July 1916 Helena Johanna Lutsenburg Maas (b. 4 March 1892, Veenwouden) in The Hague and got three daughters and two sons from her. Albert Jan Kluijver changed his birth name Kluijver in Kluyver on 12 September 1941 via the court of Breda. Notable: His spouse name Helena Johanna Lutsenburg Maas was changed into Helena Johanna Lutsenburg Maas on 26 April 1892. He died 14 May 1956 in Delft. Link to Wikipedia biograhy