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.