History
The discovery of vitamin A may have stemmed from research dating back to 1906, indicating that factors other than carbohydrates, proteins, and fats were necessary to keep cattle healthy. By 1917 one of these substances was independently discovered by Elmer McCollum at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Lafayette Mendel and Thomas Burr Osborne at Yale University. Since "water-soluble factor B" (vitamin B) had recently been discovered, the researchers chose the name "fat-soluble factor A" (vitamin A). In 1919, Steenbock (University of Wisconsin) proposed a relationship between yellow plant pigments (beta-carotene) and vitamin A. Vitamin A was first synthesized in 1947 by two Dutch chemists, David Adriaan van Dorp and Jozef Ferdinand Arens.
Read more about this topic: Vitamin A
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“These anyway might think it was important
That human history should not be shortened.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)