KLUYVER S CONTRIBUTIONS TO MICROBIOLOGY AND BIOCHEMISTRY 



'There is but one enemy of Homo sapiens, and probably the most 

 frightening of all, whom I shall deliberately disregard; this is his 

 brother, Homo ignorans. Whosoever wishes to become deeply disturbed 

 by the manner in which, through ignorance and thoughtlessness, man 

 himself is engaged in undermining his terrestrial existence, should 

 read the recent book by Fairfield Osborne, "Our Plundered Planet". 

 In this treatise, dedicated "to all who care about tomorrow", the 

 famed President of the New York Zoological Society demonstrates how 

 man, in consequence of the alarmingly rapid population increase, has 

 resorted more and more to a rapacious exploitation, and thus has 

 gradually become a geological force that even now is rapidly changing 

 the once flourishing appearance of our planet into something akin to 

 the desultory landscape of the moon'. 



It was, therefore, not so much his belief that a Professor of Micro- 

 biology at a Technological University should concern himself prima- 

 rily with the industrial application of micro-organisms on account of 

 his position, but rather his penetrating insight into the problems of 

 an industrial civilization, that caused him to pay close attention to the 

 potentialities of the microbial world as purveyors of useful ingredients 

 for industry. In connexion with the discussion of the discovery of 

 A. suboxydans it has already been mentioned that he had appre- 

 ciated the usefulness of the mildly and specific oxidative properties of 

 this organism for the production of various keto-compounds, and 

 consequently had patented this application. The same kind of fore- 

 sight had been displayed in the case of the microbiological formation 

 of 2,3-butane diol and acetyl methyl carbinol during the fermentation 

 of carbohydrates under the influence of Aerobacter and Aerobacillus cul- 

 tures. Kluyver did not fail to realize that the glycol might become an 

 important starting material for the manufacture, by a simple dehydra- 

 tion process, of butadiene, which in turn is readily convertible into 

 polyenes with rubber-like properties. The extensive studies carried 

 out during the second world war, especially in the laboratories of the 

 Canadian Research Council, have fully substantiated Kluyver's ex- 

 pectations, and it seems therefore all the more regrettable that the 

 synthetic rubber industry has so exclusively concentrated its efforts 

 on the production of butadiene from petroleum products, thereby 

 causing an additional drain on the fossil fuels rather than making 

 use of carbohydrates for the manufacture of butadiene. 



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