History
Benzoic acid was discovered in the sixteenth century. The dry distillation of gum benzoin was first described by Nostradamus (1556), and subsequently by Alexius Pedemontanus (1560) and Blaise de Vigenère (1596).
Pioneer work in 1830 through a variety of experiences based on amygdalin, obtained from bitter almonds (the fruit of Prunus dulcis) oil by Pierre Robiquet and Antoine Boutron-Charlard, two French chemists, had produced benzaldehyde but they failed in working out a proper interpretation of the structure of amygdalin that would account for it, and thus missed the identification of the benzoyl radical C7H5O. This last step was achieved some few months later (1832) by Justus von Liebig and Friedrich Wöhler, who determined the composition of benzoic acid. These latter also investigated how hippuric acid is related to benzoic acid.
In 1875 Salkowski discovered the antifungal abilities of benzoic acid, which was used for a long time in the preservation of benzoate-containing cloudberry fruits.
Read more about this topic: Benzoic Acid
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)