Photo: National Cancer Institute. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Vitamins - Building the Body and Fighting Disease
Get your vitamins
Who
has not heard the words "You need your vitamins!" as a child? Vitamins
help us grow up healthy and strong, so our parents told us, as they
recited the vitamins' own peculiar version of the alphabet, which starts
with 'A', and has a letter (sometimes with a number) to represent each
of these essential nutrients. The Nobel Prize has acknowledged the
importance of vitamins by awarding the seven scientists below. Several
Nobel Laureates who have been awarded for other achievements have also
performed research on the substances that continue to be as vital to our
health today as they were hundreds of years ago.
 Read about some important breakthroughs in vitamin research |
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Who discovered vitamins?
Find out in Sir Frederick Hopkins' lecture The Earlier History of Vitamin Research.
In 1906, the British biochemist Frederick Hopkins demonstrated that
food contains necessary "accessory factors" in addition to proteins,
carbohydrates, fats, salts and water. In 1929 he was awarded the
Medicine Prize for his work.
Read the lecture |
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Vitamin B1
"White rice can be poisonous!"
In
the 1880s, the disease beriberi reached endemic proportions in the
Dutch colonies. Army surgeon Christiaan Eijkman had seen many victims of
the disease, and thought it was caused by bacteria. His experiments
with chicken and rice showed something else ?
Read more about Christiaan Eijkman, beriberi and vitamin B1 |
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Vitamin B12
The colour of blood
Anemia
means that the amount of red blood cells in the blood is too low. After
George Whipple showed that the formation of blood cells among dogs was
stimulated by a diet rich in liver, in 1926 George Minot and William
Murphy adapted this finding for people with the serious illness of
pernicious anemia. This also shed light on the cause of pernicious
anemia, a shortage of a substance that later proved to be vitamin B12,
which is found in liver.
Watch the three researchers at the 1934 Nobel Prize award ceremony |
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Vitamin K
Coagulation vitamin
The
discovery of vitamin K, the elucidation of its nature and its synthetic
preparation are important medical discoveries. The 1943 Medicine
Laureates Henrik Dam and Edward Doisy brought us nearer the
understanding of the complicated process involved in the coagulation of
the blood and of the vitamin K.
Read more about their prize-awarded work |
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Save the chicken
This fast-paced desktop game relies on a keen knowledge of food containing vitamin B1 and good keyboard skills to save lives.
Play the Chicken Farm Game |
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Monthly Quiz
From A-K
Vitamins in food play an essential role in maintaining health and preventing diseases. But how many vitamins are there?
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3 
Vitaminas
ビタミン
