Vitamin C Analyzed

In serene Gottingen the university faculty last week talked pridefully concerning knowledge and its fruits, pointed particularly at sage Professor Adolf Windaus and two of his scholastic offshoots. Professor Windaus, 1928 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, was first man to crystallize a vitamin--Vitamin D, in 1931. The same year one of his former pupils, Dr. Ottar Rygh, announced that he had crystallized Vitamin C, the anti-scurvy ingredient of food. Last week another Windaus student, young Dr. Fritz Micheel, who has become a Gottingen professor, reported that he had analyzed the chemical nature of Vitamin C. The three items, reinforced with Professor Windaus's crystallization of Vitamin B early last year, incontestably mark the University of Gottingen as the main source of vitamin wisdom.

Vitamin C occurs in raw lemons, cabbages, oranges, lettuce, grapefruit, green peppers, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, turnips, spinach. It seems to be identical with hexuronic acid which Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, able Hungarian biochemist, discovered in cabbage leaves and adrenal glands. With knowledge of Vitamin C's chemical structure in hand, the Gottingen men expect speedily to synthesize that vitamin, as Hindus have synthesized Vitamin B, Americans Vitamin D.

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