Background
Albert Jan Kluyver was born on June 3, 1888, in Breda, the Netherlands. He was the second child and only son of Marie Honingh and Jan Cornelis Kluyver, an engineer who was later professor of mathematics at Leiden.
1921
Kluyver in 1921.
1926
Kluyver in 1926.
1953
Kluyver received the Copley medal in 1953.
Technical University of Delft, Delft, Netherlands
Kluyver entered the Technical University of Delft in 1905, and received a degree in chemical engineering in 1910.
A photo of Kluyver.
A photo of Kluyver and his colleague.
biochemist educator microbiologist scientist
Albert Jan Kluyver was born on June 3, 1888, in Breda, the Netherlands. He was the second child and only son of Marie Honingh and Jan Cornelis Kluyver, an engineer who was later professor of mathematics at Leiden.
Kluyver entered the Technical University of Delft in 1905, and received a degree in chemical engineering in 1910.
In 1910 Kluyver became assistant to professor G. van Iterson in the Technical Botany Laboratory of the University and began work on a thesis on biochemical sugar determinations, published in 1914 as Biochemische SuikerbepaUngen. In his thesis Kluyver reported on his measurement of the amount of carbon dioxide produced by yeast during aerobic incubation with sugar solutions. He further suggested that it might be possible, through the use of selected types of yeast, to determine quantitatively any one of a number of sugars in such mixtures.
In 1916 Kluyver went to the Dutch East Indies as an adviser to the Netherlands Indies Government on the promotion of native industries. He returned to the Netherlands to succeed, in 1922, M. W. Beyerinck in the chair of general and applied microbiology at the Technical University of Delft. He remained there for the rest of his life, his tenure being interrupted only in 1923, when he made a long journey to study the coconut-fiber and copra yarn industries of Ceylon and the Malabar coast of India to determine the practicality of establishing these industries in Java.
After the war, Kluyver took up new commercial duties. The Netherlands Yeast Factory greatly expanded its manufacture of pharmaceuticals, necessitating the appointment of a group of medical advisers, and Kluyver took his place at the head of this group. He further became an adviser to the Royal Dutch Shell Laboratory and to the Governmental Fiber Institute and was a trustee of the Central Organization for Applied Natural Scientific Research (T.N.O.) and a member of many of its committees. Following his example, an increasing number of Kluyver’s students went to work in industry.
In 1922, when Kluyver took up his duties at Delft, the study of the chemical activities of microorganisms was still in its infancy. Nor was his work only theoretical; in his inaugural address he had already proposed that some of the chemical activities of microorganisms might be utilized on a commercial scale. In 1924 he made the first investigation of Acetobacter suboxydans and recognized its importance in the production of sorbose, an intermediate stage in the commercial manufacture of ascorbic acid. Kluyver continued to develop the ties between theoretical and applied microbiology; by the end of the 1920s, he had begun a significant collaboration with the Netherlands Yeast and Alcohol Manufacturing Company.
Kluyver’s study of Acetobacter suboxydans led him to recognize that the vast diversity of metabolic processes can be reduced to a relatively simple and unified principle of gradual oxidation. He applied this discovery, over the next two decades, to his studies of alcoholic fermentation, phosphorylation, the assimilatory processes, the nature and mechanism of biocatalysis, and cellulose decomposition in the rumen of cattle, and further utilized it in his classification of microorganisms. In 1933, in collaboration with L. H. C. Perquin, he reported on their development of submerged cultivation of molds, by which it became possible to obtain physiologically uniform cell material for use in studying the oxidative metabolism of these organisms. In 1942, in collaboration with A. Manten, he published a paper entitled “Some Observations on the Metabolism of Bacteria Oxidizing Molecular Hydrogen,” in which he showed that biochemical properties might be used advantageously to subdivide a genus already partly characterized by physiological data.
Although the chief orientation of Kluyver’s work was biochemical, he was also profoundly interested in problems concerning the morphology and development of microorganisms. During World War II, the department of technological physics at Delft was able to provide him with an electron microscope. He thus took up new techniques in studying microbial morphology.
Kluyver received a wide spectrum of honors and was a member of many scientific societies. Of particular interest was his membership in the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected in 1926. He served as president of the natural sciences section of the organization from 1947 until 1954; during this period he was also appointed chairman of the commission bearing his name, the purpose of which was to prepare for the government recommendations concerning investigations of atomic energy. He became a member of the executive council of the Netherlands Reactor Center. He further remained active in the Biophysical Research Group DelftUtrecht, an organization dedicated to investigating biophysical problems, which Kluyver had founded with L. S. Ornstein, professor of physics at the University of Utrecht. He was also a member of the International Commission for Nomenclature and Classification of the International Congress for Microbiology.
Kluyver's character is described as sensitive, restrained, and always courteous.
Kluyver married Helena Johanna van Lutsenburg Maas in 1916; they had two sons and three daughters.