KLUYVER AS PROFESSOR; CHRONICLES OF THE LABORATORY 



that was no longer heeded after midnight had already lost its force. It 

 lost more and more terrain; after 10 p.m.; after 6 p.m., when the 

 younger students had gone; till finally the sign was removed and no 

 obstacles remained in the way of enjoyment of 'poison in one of its 

 worst forms', as Kluyver used to call it. 



During these years there were but few foreigners who came to the 

 laboratory, and these only for cursory visits. Undoubtedly it was the 

 old reputation of the institute that attracted them. A special impres- 

 sion was created by the visit of Prof, and Mrs. Lindner on their return 

 to Germany from a sojourn in Mexico where Lindner had studied the 

 manufacture of pulque. The encounter with the great fermentation 

 expert pleased Kluyver, the microbiologist, while in his function as 

 host he was perhaps as much flattered by the real interest of his guests 

 for the spirituous products of domestic origin that he offered them. 



No longer within the confines of the laboratory, though still within 

 the borders of the city, Kluyver's first contact with industry mate- 

 rialized ; during these years began his collaboration with The Nether- 

 lands' Yeast and Alcohol Manufacturing Co., Ltd. This contact had a 

 deeper origin than geographical proximity; it signified the re-establish- 

 ment of historic connexions between applied and theoretical micro- 

 biology. 



Van Marken, the founder of the yeast factory, was in many ways 

 a progressive. As early as 1885 he recognized the desirability of scien- 

 tific investigations of those microbiological processes that lie at the 

 root of the manufacture of yeast ; and to this end he succeeded in at- 

 taching Beijerinck to his industry for the ten year period, 1885- 1895. 



Unquestionably Beijerinck's scientific acumen will have benefited 

 the industry through important though indirect contributions. But he 

 definitely was not the sort of person who would unreservedly devote 

 himself to specifically industrial problems, and after his appointment 

 as professor at the Polytechnical College, which later became the 

 Technological University, his contacts with the industry practically 

 ceased. 



Viewed from a technical-industrial angle, it is therefore all the more 

 gratifying that, exactly at a time when technical developments were suf- 

 ficiently far advanced to initiate the stormy growth of a microbiological 

 industry, Kluyver appeared as the man who was so eminently suited 

 to resume the connexion, especially because the studies on the quan- 



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