The Father of Vitamins: Casimir Funk

The Father of Vitamins: Casimir Funk
Vitamins are s much a part of modern life you may have a hard time believing they are first discovered less than a century ago.

Of course, people have long known that certain food contain something special.

For example, the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed liver for night-blindness (the inability to see well in dim light).

By the end of the 18th century (1795), British Navy ships carried a mandatory supply of limes or lime juices to prevent scurvy among the men, thus earning the Brits once and forever nickname limeys.

Later on, the Japanese Navy gave its sailors whole grain barley to ward off beriberi.

Everyone knew these prescriptions worked, but nobody knew why – until 1912, when Casimir Funk (1884 – 1967), a Polish biochemist working first in England and then in the United States, identified “something” in food that he called vitamins (vita – life; amines – nitrogen compounds).

The following year, Funk and a fellow biochemist, Briton Frederick Hopkins, suggested that some medical conditions such as scurvy and beriberi simply deficiency diseases caused by absence of a specific nutrient in the body.

Adding a food with the missing nutrition to one’s diet would prevent or cure the deficiency disease.
The Father of Vitamins: Casimir Funk

Albert, Wilhelm August Julius

Albert, Wilhelm August Julius
He was born on January 24, 1787 in Hannover Germany. He was German mining official successful applier of wire cable.

After studying law at the University of Gottingen, Albert turned to the mining industry and in 1806 started his career in mining administration in the Harz district, where he became Chief Inspector of mines thirty years later.

His influence on the organization of the mining industry was considerable and he contributed valuable ideas for the development of mining technology.

For example, he initiated experiments with Reichenbach’s water column in Harz when it had been working successfully in the transportation of brine in Bavaria, and he encouraged Dorell to work on his miner’s elevator.

The increasing depth of shafts in the Harz district brought problems with hoisting as the ropes became too heavy and tended to break.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century iron link chains replaced the hempen ropes which which were expensive and wore out too quickly, especially in the wet conditions on the shafts.

After he had experimented for six years using counterbalancing iron link chains, which broke too easily, in 1834 he conceived the idea of producing stranded cables from iron wires.

Their breaking strength and flexibility depended greatly on the softness of the iron and the way of laying the strands.

Albert produced the cable by attaching the wires to strings which he turned evenly; this method became known as ‘Albert lay’.

He was not the first to conceive the idea of metal cables: there exist evidence for such cables as far back as Pompeii; Leonardo da Vinci made sketches of cables made from brass wires and in 1780 the French engineer Reignier applied iron cables for lightning conductors.

The idea also developed in various other mining areas, but Albert cables were the first to gain rapidly direct common usage worldwide.
Albert, Wilhelm August Julius

William Giauque (1895 – 1982)

William Giauque (1895 – 1982)
William Giauque – the enigma among the Canadian Nobel Prize winners – was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, to American parents who were living in Canada at the time.

He attended primary school in Michigan, but after his father’s death in 1908, the family returned to Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Giauque’s family found themselves in a precarious financial situation after his father’s death and they were extremely fortunate in having friendship of Dr. John Woods Beckman and wife Gertrude through this troubled time.

While he planned to be electrical engineer, after finished high school he took a job across the river at the Hooker Electro Chemical Company in Niagara Falls, New York, where he was fortunate enough to be employed in the laboratory for two years.

In the course of his work, which he found fascinating, he decided to change direction and become a chemical engineer.

Giauque enrolled at the College of Chemistry at the University of California, where he received his B.Sc degree in 1920. After two years as a teaching fellow at the University of California, he received his PhD in 1922.

He progressed through the system to become a full professor of chemistry in 1934, by which time, he was fully into the research that earned him his Nobel Price.

William Giauque was awarded the Nobel Prize or Chemistry in 1949 “for his contribution to the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behavior of substances at extremely low temperatures.”
William Giauque (1895 – 1982)