History of Vitamin B

The Englishman Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins is given credit for approaching the discovery of the vitamin concept, when in 1906, he determined that food contains essential ingredients beyond carbohydrates, minerals fats, proteins and water.

The term vitamin was first used for water soluble substance which was necessary for the nutrition of infants and which was separated from wheat germ, yeasts and milk.

In fact this term was used after the first discovery of anti-beriberi factor by Casimir Funk in 1912. The first vitamin B discovered was vitamin B1 by Funk that was extracted from police rice husk.

It was then isolated in pure and crystalline form by B.C.P Jansen in 1925.

Casimir coined the term ‘vital amine’ to describe the class of chemicals that he and other researchers were studying, and the word was simplified to ‘vitamin’ by 1920.

Three years after this discovery, Elmer Vernon McCollum and Marguerite Davis labeled it ‘water soluble B’ which British biochemist Jack Cecil changed to vitamin B in 1920.

Casimir Funk (1884-1967), a Polish born American biochemist, collected all published literature in the issue of deficiency diseases. He was the first to isolate niacin, latter called vitamin B3. He was working at the Lister Institute in London.

In the 1930s, of the factors thus identified, revealed their actual structures. Vitamin B turned out to be a complex blend of several vitamins.

The mixture is referred to today as the ‘vitamin B complex’ in accordance with the original nomenclature.

Vitamin B1 was designated as the one that cured beriberi and that had been discovered in 1896 by the Dutch physician Christiaan Eijkman though work carried out in Java.

The last vitamin to be discovered was vitamin B12 which was isolated in crystalline form from liver in 1948.
History of Vitamin B