About Martinus Beijerinck
Martinus Willem Beijerinck (Dutch pronunciation: [mɑrˈtinʏs ˈʋɪləm ˈbɛiərɪŋk], 16 March 1851 – 1 January 1931) was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist who was one of the founders of virology and environmental microbiology. He is credited with the co-discovery of viruses (1898), which he called "contagium vivum fluidum". == Life == === Early life and education === Born in Amsterdam, Beijerinck studied at the Technical School of Delft, where he was awarded the degree of biology in 1872. He obtained his Doctor of Science degree from the University of Leiden in 1877. At the time, Delft, then a Polytechnic, did not have the right to confer doctorates, so Leiden did this for them. He became a teacher in microbiology at the Agricultural School in Wageningen (now Wageningen University) and later at the Polytechnische Hogeschool Delft (Delft Polytechnic, currently Delft University of Technology) (from 1895). He established the Delft School of Microbiology. His studies of agricultural and industrial microbiology yielded fundamental discoveries in the field of biology. His achievements have been perhaps unfairly overshadowed by those of his contemporaries, Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, because unlike them, Beijerinck never actually studied human disease. In 1877, he wrote his first notable research paper, discussing plant galls.
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