Casimir Funk was born on February 23, 1884 in Warsaw. He studied in Berlin and Bern and is considered one of the Pioneers in the study of diseases related to vitamin deficiency.
On his birthday, Google honored the Polish researcher with a doodle. Funk adorns the search engine’s homepage on Friday and replaces the Google logo.
“Vitamins” goes back to Funk
In 1912 he was awarded a prize based on his research credited with introducing the term “vitamin.” He theorized that vitamin deficiency was the cause of certain diseases.
In his search for an active ingredient against beriberi (caused by vitamin B1 deficiency), Funk managed to to isolate vitamin B3. Although this didn’t help against beriberi, it did have an effect against another vitamin deficiency disease: pellegra.
Funk later conducted research at the Importance of vitamin B for carbohydrate metabolism and also studied the influence of vitamins on the growth of animals.
To the USA because of the world wars
After the outbreak of the Second World War Funk moved from Poland to the USA. He had already lived there from 1915 to 1923 after the outbreak of the First World War. In the year 1967 He finally died in New York as a result of cancer.