Casimir Funk

Hello! My name is Casimir Funk, and I am a scientist who helped discover something that keeps you healthy every single day. I was born on February 23rd, 1884, in Warsaw, Poland. Even as a boy, I was fascinated by the world around me and how things worked. I loved reading and learning, and my parents encouraged my curiosity. I knew early on that I wanted to spend my life in a laboratory, solving puzzles that could help people. This passion led me to leave Poland in 1900 to study chemistry and biology at universities in Switzerland and Germany. I worked hard and earned my doctorate in 1904, ready to begin my life's work.

After finishing my studies, I worked in some of the best laboratories in Europe, including the famous Pasteur Institute in Paris. During this period, the medical world was puzzled by a disease called beriberi. It was a serious illness that affected the nerves and heart, and it was especially common in parts of Asia where people's diets consisted mainly of polished white rice. A Dutch doctor named Christiaan Eijkman had made an interesting observation in the 1890s. He noticed that chickens fed only polished rice developed a similar sickness, but they recovered if they were fed rice bran—the outer layer that was removed during polishing. He believed a toxin in the white rice was the cause, but I suspected a different explanation. My determination to solve this mystery grew, and in 1910, I moved to London to work at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.

At the Lister Institute, I dedicated myself to uncovering the truth about beriberi. I spent countless hours in the lab experimenting with rice bran. My guiding hypothesis was that there was not something harmful in the white rice, but rather something essential missing from it. My goal was to isolate the exact substance within the rice bran that prevented the disease. The work was incredibly difficult and required great patience. After many failed attempts and long days of research, I finally had a breakthrough in 1912. I succeeded in extracting a tiny amount of a chemical compound that was absolutely essential for health. Since it belonged to a chemical group known as an amine and was vital for life, I combined those words and called it a 'vitamine.' This substance was later identified as thiamine, which you may know today as vitamin B1.

My discovery in 1912 was more than just finding a cure for a single disease; it was the beginning of a whole new way of thinking about health. In that same year, I published my theory that beriberi was not unique. I proposed that other well-known diseases were also caused by the lack of these special 'vitamines.' For example, I suggested that scurvy was caused by a deficiency of what we now call vitamin C, pellagra by a lack of niacin, and rickets by a lack of vitamin D. This was a revolutionary concept at the time. Before my work, most doctors believed that diseases were caused only by germs or toxins. I helped show the world that you could also become sick if your body was missing certain tiny but essential nutrients from your diet.

My work on vitamins was the start of a long career dedicated to discovery. As World War I began, I moved to the United States in 1915 and became an American citizen in 1920. I never lost my passion for research. For many decades, I continued my scientific investigations, studying other important substances in the body, like hormones, and even exploring the complexities of diseases like cancer. I eventually founded my own research institution, the Funk Foundation for Medical Research, to support ongoing scientific inquiry. For me, science was the greatest adventure, and I never stopped asking questions and searching for answers that could improve human health.

I lived to be 83 years old, passing away in 1967. Though my life came to an end, my work continues to help people all over the world every single day. The 'e' was eventually dropped from my original word, but every time you hear the word 'vitamin,' you are hearing a piece of my story. My discoveries helped launch the entire field of nutrition and proved to everyone how important a balanced diet is for a healthy life. I am proud that my curiosity helped solve a great medical mystery and continues to keep people strong and well.