Obituary Notices

Abstract

At all periods Holland has played a conspicuous part in the development of science, and in more than one branch of learning Dutchmen have led the path of advance. The Royal Society has not been wanting in its appreciation of their efforts and honoured names like Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Ruysch, Boerhaave, Donders, de Vries, van't Hoff, Zeeman and Lorentz will be found on its roll. To this galaxy must be added the name of Martinus Willem Beijerinck, botanist, microbiologist and chemist, who in the course of researches steadfastly prolonged for half a century gave abundant proof of high scientific genius and practical achievement. Martinus Willem Beijerinck was born in Amsterdam on March 16, 1851, the son of a tobacconist. On the paternal side his grandfather was an engineer of the Waterstaat, while his maternal grandfather was a Protestant pastor and learned theologian. The tobacconist father had the artistic rather than the business temperament, gave up his shop and settled in Haarlem, where he managed to secure a post on the railway. Martinus went to the Hoogere Burgerschool in Haarlem, and early showed such an interest in the wild plants of the surrounding country that at the age of sixteen he received a silver medal from the Dutch Society of Agriculture for an essay on the flora of Kennemerland, and so great had become his love for botany that he thought of adopting it as a career. Financial straits, however, made him look to a more assured future, and in 1869 he entered the Polytechnic Institute at Delft, where, in 1872, he took the diploma of "Chemical Engineer." For a short time he returned to his botanical studies in Leyden, but in 1873 he took up a post as lecturer on botany, physiology and physics at the Agricultural School at Warffum, not far from Groningen.