Martinus Beijernick

Martinus Willem Beijernick was born on March 16, 1851 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Beijernick's father's tobacco business also failed that year and the family moved to Naarden, where he found work as a clerk working for the Holland Railway Company. Due to the family's financial situation Beijernick was educated by his father until he was 12 when he went to elementary school and then secondary school in Haarlem. With the encouragement of his science teacher Beijernick developed an interest in botany and at 15 he won a prize for his collection of plant samples that included 150 different species.

With the help of his family, Beijernick entered Delft Polytechnical Academy and although he studied chemistry his main interest remained botany. While there he met J. H. Van Hoft who he remained friendly throughout his career and served as an adviser to Beijernick. Beijernick earned a bachelors in chemical engineering in 1872 and then when to the University of Leiden where he earned his doctorate in 1877. While working on his doctorate Beijernick taught, but he was a poor teacher who berated his students for wrong answers and he did not remain in one teaching position for long. In 1885 Beijernick became a microbiologist at the Netherlands Yeast and Alcohol Manufactory in Delft. In 1895 he established the School of Microbiology at Delft Polytechnical.

Beijernick was unique among microbiologists at the time in that he researched the microorganisms that affected plants rather than those that affect humans. He was the first to discover that viruses were smaller than bacteria when he found that he was unable to filter the tobacco mosaic virus unlike bacteria. He was the first to isolate a sulfate reducing bacteria, the first microorganism that did not use carbon as a source of nutrition. He was also the first to isolate bacteria that complete nitrogen fixation. Nitrogen gas makes up 78% of the atmosphere but because the nitrogen-nitrogen bond is so stable nitrogen gas does not react with other atoms. Nitrogen fixating bacteria reduce nitrogen gas to become ammonia, which can react with other atoms and is used by plants as a nitrogen source. This is an important source of nitrogen, that is used to make amino acids, which are used to synthesize proteins by living organisms.

Beijernick retired in 1921 and died on  January 1, 1931.


References:

Chung, King-Thom and Ferris, Dean Hunter; "Martinus Willem Beijernick (1851-1931) Pioneer of General Microbiology"; ASM News (1996)62:539-543

Johnson, James; "Martinus Willem Beijernick: 1851-1931"; retrieved from apsnet.org.

Martinus Beijernick Wikipedia Entry

Katherine Esau

Katherine Esau, the youngest of her parent's four children, was born on April 3, 1898 in Yekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire, which is now Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Her family were descendants of German Mennonites who had emigrated to Ukraine. Her father was a mechanical engineer and the city engineer of Yekaterinoslav. In 1918 her family fled to Germany to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. Esau learned to read and write at home, before beginning school. When she was 11 she entered the gymnasium, which she graduated from in 1916, and before leaving Russia, Esau had completed one year at Moscow's Golitsin Women's College of Agriculture. In Berlin she continued her education at the Agricultural College of Berlin. From Berlin, Esau went to a estate in northern Germany, where she worked at a wheat seed breading station. In 1922 Esau's family emigrated to the United States, settling in Reedly, California, where there was a large Mennonite community. Esau took a job in Oxnard, California working for the Sloan Seed Company. Sloan Seed went bankrupt a year later and Esau took a job with the Spreckles Sugar Company in Spreckles, California, working on a cure for curly top, a viral disease of sugar beets. While working in Spreckles, Essau was visited by Wilfed Robbins, the Chairman of the Botoany school at University of California at Davis. Impressed with her work, he offered her a graduate assistantship. Esau took the offer and graduated with a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of California at Berkeley (at that time U.C. Davis did not have a Ph.D. in Botany). After graduation Esau remained at Davis, first as an instructor and then as a professor of botany. She remained at Davis until 1963, going to U.C. Santa Barbara, where she used the electron microscope for research into plant anatomy. Esau's research involved using the electron microscope to study the development and structure of the phloem of plants. In plants there are two major types of vascular tissues, the phloem and the xylem. Plants use the phloem to transport glucose and other nutrients and use the xylem to transport water. Esau's publications included the textbook Plant Anatomy (1953), which had a great impact on the study of botany. Awards won by Esau include the National Medal of Science, awarded her in 1989, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and honorary degrees from Mills College and the University of California. Esau died on June 4 1997. References: Everet, Ray; "Katherine Esau, April 3 1898-June 4, 1997" at nap.edu Grinstein, Louise S., Biermann, Carol A., and Rose, Rose K.; Women in the Biological Sciences: a Bibliographic Sourcebook; Greenwood Publishing Group; 1997 "Remembering Katherine Esau"; U.C. Davis Biological Sciences Newsletter Fall 1997

Luther Burbank

Luther Burbank was born on March 7, 1849 in Lancaster Massachusetts, the thirteenth of fifteen children born to Samuel Walton Burbank by three marriages. A slight child, he was very introverted, making friends with plants and carrying around a cactus plant like a doll. In school he was a good student and a good writer. While still a boy he began work in the shops of the Ames Plow Company, in which his uncle Luther Ross was in a position of authority. Luther worked half days in the shop and spent his afternoons among his uncle's seedling grapes and rhubarbs. Working in the factory he developed a labor saving device, for which he received a raise. His ill health forced him to leave the factory to work outdoors in the fields.

Making his living by raising crops he developed a potato, known as the Burbank potato, which was the first of hundreds of varieties of new plants which he developed. While working in the garden on day Luther developed a partial sunstroke, and it was due to his health he was forced to migrate west, moving to Santa Rosa, California in 1875, carrying with him ten of his potatoes. In Santa Rosa he was forced to seek work wherever he could find it, once taking work at a chicken ranch where he cleaned out chicken houses, and even sleeping in one. Hard work, exposure, and frequent lack of food brought on a fever which nearly killed him. Salvation came in the form of a kind lady who provided him with a pint of sweet milk a day. When he recovered from his illness he secured a position at a small nursery.

Burbank wanted to work on his own and he soon acquired a plot of land of his own on which he started his own nursery. Finally working for himself Burbank was able to fill the order of a man who wanted prune trees (which normally take two years to grow) in a shorter time the buyer demanded by inserting prune buds into almond plants. At his first opportunity he left the nursery business to become a plant breeder. From his small home in Santa Rosa, Burbank has created over eight hundred new varieties of plants (a partial list can be found here). Burbank's work earned him the nickname "the Wizard of Santa Rosa"

Burbank was not able to patent the plants he developed because the patent laws did not allow the patenting of plants until after his death. He was however granted sixteen patents after his death, after a law was passed allowing them. In 1986 he was inducted into the inventor's hall of fame.

Burbank died on April 11, 1926.

References:

Evans, Lawton Bryan; Duncan, Luther Noble; Duncan, George William; Farm Life Readers, Book 4; Silver, Burdet & Company; 1916

Wickson, Edward James; Luther Burbank: Man, Method, and Achievements; Southern Pacific Company; 1904

Williams, Henry Smith; Luther Burbank: his life and work; Hearst's International Library Co, Inc.; 1915

Luther Burbank Wikipedia Entry