Albert Jan Kluyver, 1888-1956

Albert Jan Kluyyer was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1952. Later in the same year he delivered the third Leeuwenhoek Lecture on ‘The changing appraisal of the microbe' and only a year afterwards he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Society. This rapid succession of honours sufficiently emphasizes the esteem in which he had come to be held by microbiologists and biochemists in this country. He had more than maintained the unique position in general microbiology established by Beijerinck for the Delft laboratory, but he was above all a pioneer in investigations of the biochemistry of micro-organisms. It is for this latter aspect of his work and its repercussions on the advance of both biochemistry and microbiology that he will be best remembered.