A Dutch physician working in the Dutch East Indies who noticed that laboratory chickens fed polished, leftover military-ration rice developed the paralysis-like symptoms of beriberi, and that the birds recovered within days once a change of cook restored their diet to unpolished rice. He traced the effect to a substance present in rice husks and absent from polished rice, ruling out infection as the cause, work that by 1897 identified what would later be recognized as a deficiency of vitamin B1, thiamine. He shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Frederick Gowland Hopkins.
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FAQs
What did Christiaan Eijkman demonstrate about beriberi?
He showed beriberi is caused by poor diet, leading to the discovery of thiamine.
Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch physician and professor of physiology whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of antineuritic vitamins (thiamine). Together with Sir Frederick Hopkins, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1929 for the discovery of vitamins.
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Associated With
Shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for related work identifying vitamins and deficiency diseases.
Source Christiaan Eijkman (Wikipedia)
Discoveries
Christiaan Eijkman's late-1800s work on polyneuritis in chickens on the Dutch East Indies established the link between an unrefined-rice diet and beriberi, founding the study of deficiency diseases and earning him the 1929 Nobel Prize.
Source Christiaan Eijkman (Wikipedia)
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Source Christiaan Eijkman (Wikipedia)
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Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Sources
1. Wikidata: Christiaan Eijkman
- Wikidata Q107609, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)
- Wikidata P569 (w-bbfill-medicine3-0926)
View the Source2. Christiaan Eijkman (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia- The Accidental Discovery
Infobox: birth_date
August 11, 1858
Infobox: death_date
November 5, 1930
- Discoveries: Discovery of Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases
- Specialist In: Internal Medicine
- Associated With: Frederick Gowland Hopkins
In Group: Hormone, Vitamin and Drug Discoverers, Introduction, sentence 1
Christiaan Eijkman (UK: AYK-mən, EYEK-mən, US: -mahn, Dutch: [ˈkrɪstijaːn ˈɛikmɑn]; 11 August 1858-5 November 1930) was a Dutch physician and professor of physiology whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of antineuritic vitamins (thiamine).
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