Vitamins and minerals - history and importance

Discovering the concept of vitamins

One hundred years ago, a Polish-American scientist attempted to isolate the first vitamin (B1) from rice bran. Kazimierz Funk called his discovery a "vitamin." He believed that it was an essential amine (nitrogen compound) for life. This compound found its way into the popular consciousness in a slightly altered name, as "vitamin." This was despite the fact that, according to later knowledge, most vitamins are not actually amines. Funk's breakthrough discovery played a decisive role in the development of nutrition. The world now takes it for granted.

Funk (1884-1967) was the first scientist to suggest the existence of a whole family of organic substances that are essential to life, and the first to give these substances names that explain their effects. In his distinguished scientific career, which spanned the era of the two World Wars, Funk studied and worked in Europe and the United States. He held various positions in academia and industry and improved methods of producing commercial drugs. However, he never received a Nobel Prize for his work. The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America annually awards the Kazimierz Funk Prize for Natural Sciences to a Polish-American scientist.

In 1921, British biochemist Sir Jack Cecil Drummond suggested combining the use of the letters of the alphabet with the term "vitamin" to describe a series of related organic micronutrients from food. Food components of this kind became known as vitamins A, B, C and so on