Some things are named after the people who discovered, invented or popularized them. Hence Curium, Pasteurization, Petrarchean sonnets and Sheldon’s fender nuts.
Sometimes it’s a good thing when folks don’t name their creations, inventions or discoveries after themselves.For example, we should be as thankful for that the man scientist who discovered vitamins so named them.
On this date 140 years ago, Casimir Funk was born in Warsaw, Poland. He earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Bern when he was 20. His early career included work at the Pasteur institute in Paris and the Lister Institute in London.
Being the skilled observer he was, he couldn’t help but to notice that certain foods helped to prevent diseases. In particular, he noted that people who ate brown rice were less vulnerable to beri-beri than those who ate the white stuff.
He set out to learn what, in foods, promotes health or prevents illness. He isolated substances in them and saw that they contained amines—members of a group of compounds that include amino acids.
Over three decades he discovered 13 such amines, which he called vita amines—the life amines. That name became, of course, vitamins.
So why am I writing about ohim on a bike blog? Well, most cyclists I know are at least somewhat nutrition-conscious. And the way competitive cyclists eat has changed greatly, especially within the past three decades or so.
Training tables for cyclists and other athletes consisted of foods chosen by trainers who, as often as not, had no training in anatomy or physiology, let alone nutrition. So what athletes ate and drank was guided by long-held notions about particular foods. (Oh, and many racers smoked because it was believed to “open up the lungs.)
As cycling teams began to hire nutritionists and doctors who were knowledgeable about sports medicine, emphasis shifted from the foods themselves to what is in them. And racers started to take supplements.
The way cyclists and other athletes think about nutrition, then, has been made possible, at least in part, by Casimir Funk’s work in isolating vitamins.
We should be glad he didn’t call them Funkies.
