The Jan IngenHousz Institute takes its name from the 18th-century Dutch physician and chemist Jan Ingen Housz. Born in Breda, he studied medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain and worked as a family doctor in Breda for several years.

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In 1764, Ingen Housz travelled to London to study smallpox inoculation, the precursor of modern vaccination. He worked with Thomas Dimsdale on a pioneering and successful mass inoculation in two villages in the English county of Hertfordshire. He later was summoned to Vienna to inoculate the family of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa and served as royal physician and freelance investigator.

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Of the many scientific contributions of Ingen Housz, the most outstanding was his discovery that plants use light energy. He demonstrated that plants do not merely purify air, as was assumed until then, but in sunlight, the green parts of plants release oxygen, thereby actively producing pure air. He was able to demonstrate, using eudiometry, a volumetric analysis of oxygen, that the green parts of plants release oxygen. He published these findings in his book Experiments Upon Vegetables in 1779.

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Diligence, integrity and collaboration were important values for Ingen Housz. He is remembered today as an open and critical global citizen, a social man with an international outlook. These are the values on which the Jan IngenHousz Institute aims to build further.