Casimir Funk

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Casimir Funk

Casimir Funk , actually Kazimierz Funk , (born February 23, 1884 in Warsaw , Russian Empire ; † November 19, 1967 in Albany , New York State , USA ) was a Polish-American biochemist who, in 1912, mistakenly believed that all of the end In the 19th century, food ingredients researched contained amino groups , for which they coined the term “ vitamin ” (“vital amine”), which persisted despite later findings to the contrary.

He studied in Berlin and Switzerland . In 1904 he received his doctorate from the University of Bern . He first began his work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris . He later worked in Berlin and London . He introduced the name "vitamins" in 1912 through knowledge from fundamental work on vitamin deficiency diseases, such as beriberi . He used the term incorrectly in two ways. What Funk called the beriberi vitamin was neither an amine nor worked against beriberi. While searching for the anti-beriberi factor, vitamin B 1 or thiamine , he isolated nicotinic acid , vitamin B 3 . The latter is useless to beriberi, but has shown effects in the treatment of pellagra .

In 1915 he emigrated to the USA , where he was naturalized in 1920. In 1922, Funk was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In 1923 he returned to Poland, where he worked as a director at the State Hygiene Institute. In 1927 he left Poland for Paris. In 1936 he was able to decipher the structure of vitamin B 1 and developed a method for its synthesis. With the outbreak of World War II , he finally moved to the USA. He died in 1967 of cancer. The Funk Glacier in Antarctica bears his name in his honor.

literature

Web links

Commons : Casimir Funk  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Casimir Funk, The Etiology of the Deficiency Diseases. Beri-beri, polyneuritis in birds, epidemic deopsy, scurvy, experimental scurvy in animals, infantile scurvy, ship beri-beri, pellagra . In: Journal of State Medicine 20, 1912, pp. 341-368
  2. ↑ Bernd Leitenberger: Vitamins . Author's website, accessed November 19, 2017.
  3. ↑ Karim Bschir: Science and Reality, pp. 14–15
personal data
SURNAME Funk, Casimir
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Funk, Kazimierz (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1967
Place of death Albany , New York State , USA