Albert Jan Kluyver

ForMemRS Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematic ...

(June 3, 1888 – May 14, 1956) was a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

microbiologist and biochemist.

Career

In 1926, Kluyver and Hendrick Jean Louis Donker published the now classic paper, "Die Einheit in der Biochemie" ("Unity in Biochemistry"). The paper helped establish Kluyver's vision that, at a biochemical level, all organisms are unified. Kluyver famously expressed the idea with the aphorism: "From elephant to butyric acid bacterium – it is all the same". The paper, and other work from Kluyver's lab, helped support both the concept of biochemical unity as well as the idea of "comparative biochemistry", which Kluyver envisioned as biochemically equivalent to comparative anatomy. The concept established a theoretical basis for studying chemical processes in bacteria and extrapolating those processes to higher organisms. The concepts of "biochemical unity" and "comparative biochemistry" were both very influential and probably Kluyver's most significant work. Kluyver's best known student,

C. B. van Niel Cornelis Bernardus van Niel (also known as Kees van Niel) (November 4, 1897 – March 10, 1985) was a Dutch-American microbiologist. He introduced the study of general microbiology to the United States and made key discoveries explaining t ...

, commented on his mentor's scientific influence and noted that by the middle of the 20th century his work on biochemical unity was no longer cited. His aphorism was sufficiently widespread that in 1961

François Jacob François Jacob (17 June 1920 – 19 April 2013) was a French biologist who, together with Jacques Monod, originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells occurs through regulation of transcription. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize ...

and

Jacques Monod Jacques Lucien Monod (February 9, 1910 – May 31, 1976) was a French biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and André Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of e ...

paraphrased it, without mentioning Kluyver, as "that old axiom 'what is true for bacteria is also true for elephants'" to justify the

genetic code The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material ( DNA or RNA sequences of nucleotide triplets, or codons) into proteins. Translation is accomplished by the ribosome, which links ...

's universality. His career was profoundly influenced by

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Awards and honours

Kluyver is associated with the '' Delft school'' of microbiology where he was the successor to

Martinus Beijerinck Martinus Willem Beijerinck (, 16 March 1851 – 1 January 1931) was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist who was one of the founders of virology and environmental microbiology. He is credited with the discovery of viruses, which he called "'' ...

. In 1926 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is considered the father of comparative microbiology, and in 1953, he won the Copley medal. In 1956, botanist Johannes P. Van der Walt published '' Kluyveromyces'', which is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of ascomycetous

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constit ...

s in the family Saccharomycetaceae and named in Kluyver's honour. In 1981, the genus

Kluyvera ''Kluyvera'' is a Gram negative, facultatively anaerobic bacterial and motile genus from the family of Enterobacteriaceae which have peritrichous flagella. ''Kluyvera'' occur in water, soil and sewage. Kluyvera bacteria can cause opportunisti ...

comprising bacteria from the former ''enteric group 8'' was named after him.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kluyver, Albert 1888 births 1956 deaths Delft University of Technology faculty Dutch biochemists Dutch microbiologists Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Foreign Members of the Royal Society Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Breda Recipients of the Copley Medal

Career

Awards and honours

See also

References

External links