43 



nection with mathematical considerations lay nearest his heart. This 

 does not mean that he had lost his interest in microbiology i); the 

 300 letters written to his biographer in the course of the ten years 

 granted him at Gorssel bear witness to the vitality of his interest, as 

 they deal almost exclusively with bacteriology. Several times he 

 wrote very enthusiastically about the discovery of bacteriophagy 

 which phenomenon he considered a confirmation of his theory on the 

 contagium vivum fluïdum 2). 



An example of such a letter is reproduced — slightly reduced — in 

 Plate X. Both Beijerinck's handwriting and the composition of the 

 letter are characteristic. 



Typical for the indestructibility of Beijerinck's scientific enthu- 

 siasm are the words with which he, at the age of 75, wound up a letter 

 to his successor : "Fortunatearethosewhonow start". This remark has 

 since been written on the wall of one of the rooms in his old laboratory. 



Soon after the publication of the Collected Papers had been com- 

 pleted, a long stream of honours began to flow in upon their author; 

 not until then did it become clear to the scientific world what a 

 pioneer Beijerinck had been, and in many fields of biology. After 

 being made a corresponding member of the Czecho-Slovakian Botani- 

 cal Society in February 1922, Denmark accorded him the Emil 

 Christian Hansen medal on March lOth of the same year. He was 

 invited to come and receive the medal at Copenhagen and lecture 

 thereonhis life-work. It will hardly be necessary to say that Beije- 

 rinck had no liking for these ceremonies, and on May 29th, 1922, Pro- 

 fessor SöRENSEN, accompanied by his wife, came to Gorssel to hand 

 him the medal and its money-prize. An illuminated address hearing 

 the signatures of such distinguished scientists as Calmette, Theo- 

 BALD Smith, C. o. Jensen, Joh. Schmidt and S. P. L. Sörensen 

 accompanied the medal. A facsimile of this testimonv is reproduced in 

 Plate XI. 



In the course of the following years Beijerinck received many 

 additional distinctions. In 1926 he w^as elected a Foreign Member of 

 the Royal Society, a nomination which he valued highly, also on 

 account of his veneration for van Leeuwenhoek, w^ho had been the 

 first Dutchman to receive this rare distinction. The Danish and 

 Russian Academies of Sciences had already made him a Foreign 

 Member, as has the British Society for Medical Research. He further 

 became a corresponding member of the Society of American Bac- 

 teriologists, of the Deutsche Boden-Gesellschaft, while the Société 

 microbiologique a Leningrad, the Wiener Gesellschaft für Mikrobiolo- 

 gie and the Société pour la Zymologie pure et appliquée a Bruxelles 

 all made him an honorary member. He also was Honorary Chairman 



•) In later years he regarded the United States as the land of the future for micro- 

 biology. 



2) See for this also his article : Pasteur en de Ultra-microbiologie. Verzamelde Ge- 

 schriften 6, p. 16. 



