Influence of Delft

Delft: the birthplace of microbiology?

The world of science is a very progressive world; one is trying to understand and control life as much as possible. In iGEM we are even more progressive, we are working in a relative “new” field, called Synthetic Biology. Central in the synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and system that do not exist in the natural world and the redesign of existing biological systems to perform specific tasks.

These innovative and advanced developments are the result of hours and hours of work done by a lot of genius scientist. However, for every development there should always be a basis. If one would back trace all the innovation to their origin, the basis for all our current lab-work are micro-organisms. In that sense, one may consider the discovery of microorganisms as the basis for all our achievements and the forthcoming, promising achievements. Succeeding with this line of reasoning, one may see Delft as the birthplace of microbiology. Four genius scientist contributed very important discoveries during these first steps in Microbiology. Since the fact that this year the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Biotechnologie exist 100 year and because we are very proud of the important contribution of the Delft’s scientist, we would like to pay attention to these four amazing and important scientist.

The Delft's Scientist

Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek

First of all, in 1674 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked through his microscope and discovered a total new world, the world of microbiology. These became known due to his correspondence with the Royal Society in London.

Martinus Willem Beijerink

The second important scientist from Delft was Martinus Willem Beijerinck. He was the first professor of Microbiology in Delft and he is –not for nothing- seen as the founding father of the Delft School of Microbiology. He was the first person who used the term “virus” for the invisible disease causing material that he had shown to be self-replicating on tobacco leaves –TMV. Beside this, he originated the selective culture technique (now known as enrichment culturing, which is still used!) and was the first to isolate a wide range of microorganisms.

Martinus Willem Beijerink

Gerrit van Iterson jr. was one of Beijerink’s pupils and is the third important scientist. He was the Professor of Applied Botany, which includes a lot of work on tropical products such as rubber and tea. Furthermore Iterson is known due to the fact that he was fascinated by the mathematics underlying plant organisation and development; he was a bio mathematician.

Martinus Willem Beijerink

Last, but certainly not least, Albert Jan Kluyver. Kluyver was the second Professor of Microbiology at Delft, and a pupil of Iterson. Among Kluyver's achievements is his work on Unity in Biochemistry. In this work he describes that biochemical pathways are essentially similar, no matter what sort of organism. Beside this he showed that it would be wise to combine biochemical and morphological features if one identifies microorganisms. Further he also showed that one can get reproducible results with fungi by using submerged cultures rather than allowing them to develop on the surface of media.

The Museum

In the attic of our laboratory one could see an extended collection of these last three genius scientist. Our own Biological Safety Officer, Dr. L.A. (Lesley) Robertson has –beside her responsibility of safety in our building- spend many, many hours on the amazing, expanded archives in the attic of our building. For several years (since 1990) she is also the curator of the Delft School of Microbiology Archives.

One room is maintained as a small museum for visitors to see. This includes the desk and chair used by Professor Beijerinck and Kluyver, a clock from Beijerink’s private laboratory, Kluyver’s photo collections and plant models from the Iterson collection. Most of the work is done by volunteers, without their help this wasn’t possible.

The second room has a climate-controlled archival storage. The most important items in the collection are the papers of the three Professors, including their laboratory journals. Furthermore there is a wonderful painting collection and e.g. a substantial collection of glass negative. We, as the whole team, would recommend you to visit this remarkable collection when visiting Delft. Please contact Dr. L.A. Robertson for an appointment.