Vitamin Discovery

[email hidden] wrote in news:5290-4083FDF3-490@storefull-
3135.bay.webtv.net:

Quoted message said:

What is the history of this subject? Was it done over the years? Was
it done by one researcher or several? When was the "last" vitamin
"discovered" & which one was it? Will there be more?

It's a long and fascinating history. Any good biochemistry text should
give the details. The discoveries took place over several decades (mostly
from 1910, when thiamine was discovered, to 1948, when B12 was discovered),
with different researchers working independently. The substance most
recently classified as a vitamin was pyrroloquinoline quinone, which was
discovered in 1979 but only classified as a vitamin last year (it's not yet
known if there are any *human* deficiency diseases caused by lack of it,
but it plays a biochemical role similar to that of niacin and riboflavin).

Incidentally, the discovery of niacin had a lot of political implications;
Joseph Goldberger proved that the disease pellagra, endemic among poor
people in the American South, was the result of a deficient diet rather
than bad genes. This was at the height of the eugenics movement and the
discovery was a major blow to the eugenicists because it showed that one of
the problems of the poor could be eliminated by spending more money on them
rather than by stopping them from breeding. Nature, it seems, isn't always
as "politically incorrect" as the eugenicists and sociobiologists would
have you think. Oh, and the eugenicists, when mentioning Goldberger's name
in sneering tones, would always put an extraordinary amount of emphasis on
its first syllable.