KLUYVER AS PROFESSOR; CHRONICLES OF THE LABORATORY 



ence nevertheless remained evident. He ordered his senior assistant, 

 Den Dooren de Jong, to conduct various experiments, so that the 

 latter found himself confronted with an insoluble dilemma. On the 

 one hand he experienced the desire to maintain, also by regular visits 

 to Gorssel, a cherished contact that had grown with the passage of 

 time; on the other hand there were the daily activities in the Delft 

 laboratory, in an atmosphere of sweeping renovation. And a choice 

 had to be made. Disappointed, he left the once so beloved laboratory 

 in the course of 1923, with the firm intention, following a higher exam- 

 ple, never again to cross its threshold. At the leave-taking, Kluyver's 

 honesty and warm heart made him express regret that his associate 

 had fared so badly during this first year, and declared that he owed 

 him a debt of honour which he hoped to redeem sometime in the fu- 

 ture. Den Dooren de Jong likes to tell of the royal manner in which 

 this so-called obligation was subsequently redeemed; how much he. 

 owed Kluyver in connexion with the preparation of his thesis, and 

 later with his investigations on bacteriophages which he conducted in 

 Rotterdam ; how the personal relationship developed into a strong tie 

 of friendship ; and how, to his great joy, his home could offer Kluyver 

 a temporary but welcome and safe refuge during the second world 

 war. 



Kluyver, too, visited his predecessor now and then in Gorssel. After 

 such visits he returned not only mentally worn out, but occasionally 

 even disturbed. That he had to digest various quaint, albeit undoubt- 

 edly clever, remarks on the most diverse subjects could be tolerated. 

 But he also became aware of insurmountable barriers, as on the occa- 

 sion when Beijerinck, in reply to an inquiry about a member of the 

 staff, flatly pontificated: 'X is an honest man, but he lies!' A mind as 

 rational as Kluyver's could not stomach this. 



Consequently Kluyver could not be blind to the peculiarities of him 

 whom he was wont to call 'my great predecessor' ; nevertheless he held 

 him in the highest esteem, and never neglected to make this clear to 

 his pupils. The lecture in which he introduced Beijerinck's elective 

 culture methods under the classical and characteristic title : 'The mar- 

 vels of a gram of garden soil', usually contained a passage in which 

 Kluyver underscored the significance of the elective culture method 

 as follows : 



'Curators of culture collections often receive requests for cultures of 



'7 



