What scientist discoverd vitamins ?
Bonus points for the first vitamin he found and what item he found it in.

Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins was the first to give clear evidence of "accessory factors" in diet.
Shortly after, Casimir Funk first used the word vitamine. (vital amine - the e was later dropped because not all vitamins are amines). He determined the chemical structure of an amine (Thiamine, aka Vitamin B1) in white rice that prevented beriberi.
In 1913, Elmer Verner McCollum discovered the first fat-soluble vitamin, vitamin A. He discovered it by not giving butterfat to rats - they failed to develop, and he named the chemical that he concluded was present in butterfat "factor A"

[This message was edited by methos5000 on 02-23-03 at 11:30 AM.]

Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins
In 1901 he discovered tryptophan (in milk?)

Tex - I believe you are right, but tryptophan is not a vitamin, it is an amino acid.



depending on what is classified as discovery, we could credit the egyptians with the discovery of vitamin A becasue they discovered that eating certain foods prevented night blindness, and there is of course James Lind's 1747 discovery that eating certain foods will prevent scurvy.... but it wasn't until Hopkins and Funk that scientists really realized that certain chemicals were the cause and managed to isolate them.

Ummm, Methos, I'm sure it was just a slip, but wasn't B vit found in whole grain rice?

babs - oops ... you're absolutely correct, i meant to say whole rice (because it is present in the husk, which is, of course, removed to make white rice).

Never mind, methos. On Jeeves once I informed the world that the pole star is Sirius. Don't know what I was thinking.