to German. In 1911 a Polish biochemist Casimir Funk isolated the antineuritic substance from rice bran (the modern thiamine) that he called a "vitamine" (on account of its containing an amino group). However, Funk did not completely characterize its chemical structure. Dutch chemists, Barend Coenraad Petrus Jansen and his closest collaborator Willem Frederik Donath, went on to isolate and crystallize the active agent in 1926, whose structure was determined by Robert Runnels Williams, in 1934. Thiamine was named by the Williams team as a portmanteau of "thio" (meaning sulfur-containing) and "vitamin". The term "vitamin" coming indirectly, by way of Funk, from the amine group of thiamine itself (although by this time, vitamins were known to not always be amines, for example, vitamin C). Thiamine was also synthesized by the Williams group in 1936. Sir Rudolph Peters, in Oxford, used pigeons to understand how thiamine deficiency results in the pathological-physiological symptoms of beriberi. Pigeons fed exclusively on polished rice developed opisthotonos, a condition characterized by head retraction. If not treated, the animals died after a few days. Administration of thiamine after opisthotonos was observed led to a complete cure within 30 minutes. As no morphological modifications were seen in the brain of the pigeons before and after treatment with thiamine, Peters introduced the concept of a biochemical-induced injury. In 1937, Lohmann and Schuster showed that the diphosphorylated thiamine derivative, TPP, was a cofactor required for the oxidative decarboxylation of pyruvate. References External links Aminopyrimidines B vitamins Coenzymes Poultry diseases Primary alcohols Thiazoles World Health Organization essential medicines Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate Quaternary ammonium compounds Cations