1912 | Nutrition
Nutrition
Tokyo University agricultural chemist Umetaro Suzuki, 38, extracts an antiberiberi compound from rice hulls (see 1906; R.R. Williams, 1933).
"Feeding Experiments Illustrating the Importance of Accessory Food Factors in Normal Dietaries" by biochemist Frederick Gowland Hopkins, now 51, establishes his reputation.
Die Vitamine by Casimir Funk suggests that beriberi, rickets, pellagra, and sprue may all be caused by "vitamine" deficiencies (see 1911).
Kansas-born University of Wisconsin biochemist E. V. (Elmer Verner) McCollum, 33, and his Racine-born colleague Marguerite Davis, 24, discover in butter and egg yolks the fat-soluble nutrient that will later be called vitamin A. They establish that it was a lack of this nutrient that caused C. A. Pekelharing's Dutch mice to die prematurely in 1905 when given no milk. New Haven-born Yale biochemist Thomas B. Osborne, 53, and his New York-born colleague Lafayette B. (Benedict) Mendel, 40 (a onetime assistant to Russell H. Chittenden) make a similar discovery.