Founded as the
Geneeskundig Laboratorium, or Medical Laboratory, at Jalan Diponegoro No. 69 in Central Jakarta in 1888,
Christiaan Eijkman was stationed there as its first director. During his time there, he discovered that
Beriberi, which was commonly believed to be caused by external forces, was caused by a lack of
thiamine in the human body. This led to a
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for Eijkman in 1929. In 1938, the laboratory was renamed the
Eijkman Instituut (Eijkman Institute) in honor of Eijkman. During
World War II, Japanese occupiers accused the center's first Indonesian director, Achmad Mochtar, of poisoning a batch of vaccine that was to be delivered to slave laborers. After Mochtar and his researchers were tortured and interrogated, he made a deal with the Japanese that he would plead guilty if his researchers were released. He was then executed and buried in an unmarked grave. During the 1960s, the institute closed due to upheaval in the country and was absorbed into the
Cipto Mangunkusomo Hospital. It remained closed for the next thirty years until 1992, when
B.J. Habibie, the Minister of Research and Technology, decided to reopen the institute. The institute opened formally by Ministry of Research and Technology Decree No. 475/M/Kp/VII/1992. By 1993, it was fully operational, but ran into further troubles in 1998 due to the
Asian financial crisis. In 2004, the institute identified the suicide bomber
who blew himself up in front of the Australian Embassy, which drew recognition to the practical benefits of molecular biology. Today, the institute houses one of the few
Biosafety Level 3 laboratories in the country, which is equipped with a gas decontamination chamber. However, Eijkman Institute somewhat enjoyed unique status within the ministry. The most important was, despite being a government-run institute, their recruitment of their human resources mostly by contract similar to a private company recruitment. As result, the Eijkman Institute researchers and staffs having unusual status in Indonesia government employment system and cannot be categorized as one, they are not a government civil servant but having their salary paid by government. Not only that they do not have proper career track as Indonesian government scientists and government staffs. == Demotion, strippage, and institutional split ==