Nikolai Lunin (scientist)
File:Lunin Nikolay Ivanovich.jpg
Nikolai Ivanovich Lunin (21 May 1854 – 18 June 1937){{cite web |title=Erik-Amburger-Datenbank - Datensatz anzeigen |url=https://amburger.ios-regensburg.de/index.php?id=60202 |website=amburger.ios-regensburg.de |publisher=IOS: Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research |access-date=13 February 2023}} was a Russian Empire and later Soviet scientist who was the first to discover the existence of vitamins.
As a student in Basel, he fed mice on a diet of proteins, fats, sugar, salts and water, but they died. He concluded that in addition to casein, fat, milk sugar and salts, milk must contain other substances that are indispensable for nutrition.
His dissertation was published abroad in 1881, however other scientists were unable to replicate his work. Lunin had used cane sugar, but others used ill-purified milk sugar, which turned out to contain vitamin B, which saved the mice. Frederick Gowland Hopkins, in his Nobel Prize lecture, references Lunin's work.{{cite web |title=Frederick Gowland Hopkins: Nobel lecture, The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1929 |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1929/hopkins/lecture/ |website=NobelPrize.org |access-date=13 February 2023}}
Lunin is buried at Volkovo Cemetery in St Petersburg, next to his wife, who died two years before him.
References
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External links
- {{cite journal |last1=Cherkes |first1=L. A. |title=N. I. Lunin and his role in the initial stage of vitaminology |journal=Arkhiv Patologii |date=1955 |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=69–75 |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14377975/ |access-date=13 February 2023 |issn=0004-1955}} Article in Russian
- {{cite journal |last1=Voss |first1=H. E. |title=Nicolai I. Lunin—1853–1937. A Biographical Essay |journal=Journal of the American Dietetic Association |date=1 April 1956 |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=317–320 |doi=10.1016/S0002-8223(21)16075-4 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002822321160754 |access-date=13 February 2023 |language=en |issn=0002-8223}}
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