Casimir Funk

Casimir Funk was a Polish-American biochemist who coined “vitamine” in 1912 and helped advance the idea that diseases such as beriberi result from specific dietary deficiencies.

Beriberi: A disease caused by thiamine deficiency, affecting the nervous system or cardiovascular system. Beriberi was a central example in Funk’s case for disease-causing dietary deficiencies.
Joseph Goldberger: An American physician who demonstrated that pellagra was associated with dietary deficiency rather than infection. Goldberger extended deficiency-disease reasoning to pellagra through clinical and dietary investigations.
Vitamin: An organic nutrient required in small amounts for normal metabolism and health. Funk’s coined term became the name for this class of essential nutrients.
Vitamin discovery: The identification of individual vitamins through nutritional, biological, and chemical research. Funk’s proposal helped motivate the search for distinct essential dietary factors.
Christiaan Eijkman: A Dutch physician whose experiments on chickens linked polished rice to beriberi-like illness. Eijkman’s rice experiments supplied evidence that informed Funk’s deficiency theory.
Elmer McCollum: An American biochemist who helped identify vitamin A and vitamin D. McCollum’s research helped turn the broad vitamin idea into the discovery of distinct nutrients.
Micronutrient: A nutrient needed in small quantities, including vitamins and minerals. Vitamins belong to the wider class of nutrients required in small amounts.
Fortification: The addition of nutrients to foods to prevent or correct dietary deficiencies. The deficiency framework Funk helped establish supports adding vitamins to staple foods.
Frederick Hopkins: A British biochemist who showed that diets require small amounts of accessory food factors. Hopkins independently argued that diet contains essential factors beyond proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
Marguerite Davis: An American biochemist who co-discovered vitamin A with Elmer McCollum. Davis’s work exemplifies the experimental vitamin discoveries that followed Funk’s proposal.

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