The discovery of vitamins

Year: 1904

When the Dutch doctor Christiaan Eijkman was studying beriberi (a neurological disease) in the Dutch East Indies, he discovered that his test subjects - local chickens - got better when his new cook started feeding them a different kind of rice. An interesting finding, that he could not explain.

Some years later, his colleague Gerrit Grijns continued studying beriberi in the colony. After conducting many meticulous experiments, he discovered that unprocessed rice contains a unique component that is essential for living beings. He correctly concluded that beriberi was not an infectious disease, but rather a matter of deficiency of the rice-component. Twenty years later, scientists discovered that Grijns' substance is just one of the many essential nutrients, and named it vitamin B1.

However, the Nobel prize for discovering vitamins was awarded not to Grijns, but to Eijkman. Was the prize rightly awarded? Even though Eijkman accidently found that rice was involved, it was Grijns who first understood that it contains an essential nutriënt. This teaches us that incidental findings do not naturally lead to great discoveries: research skills and well-conducted experiments are also needed.

In addition, it shows that not only scientists, but also those who award scientists for their discoveries, can make mistakes.

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