Casimir Funk life and legacy

 

November 19, 1967 – February 23, 1884 was a Polish scientist who, following the publication of a seminal medical work in 1912, is widely acknowledged as having been among the first to create the notion of vitamins. He emphasized the importance of these "vital amines" (also known as "vitamines") in the treatment of serious illnesses including rickets and pellagra, and his research had a profound impact on a change in scientific perspective.[4] He conducted research in Poland, France, and the United Kingdom for his scientific work. After obtaining US citizenship in 1920, he carried on with his job there.

Early life and education

The son of a dermatology professional, he was born in Warsaw, Poland. He received his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Bern in 1904, when he was twenty years old. He was employed as a biochemist at the Lister Institute, the University of Berlin, the Wiesbaden Municipal Hospital, and the Pasteur Institute early in his career. Funk moved to New York State in 1915 and continued to go back and forth between the US and Europe until the Second World War. He worked there for a number of years before becoming an American citizen in 1920.

Funk hailed from a Jewish family. According to retrospective reporting by a British news agency, he achieved his academic goals at all of those other universities without encountering any particular challenges, even though he studied in several European nations amid rising antisemitism at home.

Career

Funk attempted to identify the substance that was causing the problem and was successful after reading an article by Christiaan Eijkman that suggested those who ate brown rice were less susceptible to beri-beri than those who ate only the completely milled grain. He named the chemical "vitamine" since it included an amine group. His description of it as "anti-beri-beri-factor" and his assumption that it would be thiamine (vitamin B1) led to its eventual identification as vitamin B3 (niacin).[Reference required]

His first English-language publication on dihydroxyphenylalanine was published in 1911. Funk was certain that more than one chemical, such as vitamin B1, existed. In his 1912 Journal of State Medicine essay, he claimed the existence of at least four vitamins: one that prevents scurvy ("antiscorbutic"); another that prevents beriberi ("antiberiberi"); Following reading a Christiaan Eijkman essay, which suggested that those who are, respectively, preventing rickets ("antirachitic") and pellagra ("antipellagric"). Following that, Funk wrote and published a book titled The Vitamines in 1912 and was awarded a Beit Fellowship to carry out more research in the same year.

Funk postulated that vitamins might also be able to treat other conditions like scurvy, pellagra, celiac disease, and rickets. Funk was one of the first researchers on the pellagra issue. He proposed that the pellagra outbreak was caused by a modification in the corn-milling process, but his paper on the topic received little attention.

Later, when it was discovered that vitamins did not always have to be amines that included nitrogen, the "e" at the end of "vitamine" was omitted.

 discovery of the vitamins and their deficiency disorders

The history of vitamin deficient illnesses parallels the history of vitamin discovery. Casimir Funk, known as the "father of vitamin therapy," made the discovery. Funk investigated the interactions between those factors in the human body that Eijkman had shown in animals, especially birds, through his experimental study. Through experimental study, Funk determined which dietary components were lacking in people who had 'deficiency illnesses', such as pellagra, scurvy, rickets, and human beri-beri. He named these substances "vitamins" in 1911 (where "vita" means life and "amine" is a nitrogenous substance necessary for living); the scientific world accepted this term in 1912.