Cheers to Albert Szent-Gyorgyi! Raise a glass of orange juice
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Google Doodle watchers might want to start their day by raising a tall, cold glass of orange juice in honor of Albert von Szent-Györgyi, the Nobel-Prize winning Hungarian researcher credited with discovering vitamin C.
The new Google Doodle -- the emblem chosen now and again to substitute for the logo atop Google’s browser page -- features a bounty of fresh citrus offerings as well as other fruit high in vitamin C. There are grapefruit and oranges, of course, but also other produce rich in vitamin C, such as strawberries and, off to the right, a colorful bouquet of chili peppers.
Szent-Györgyi was conducting research at Cambridge and in the United States when he isolated the substance now known as ascorbic acid, commonly called vitamin C. At one point during his research, he had trouble repeating his experiments because he had used up the last of his vitamin C supply. He decided to test paprika peppers to see whether they could be a vitamin C source.
Bull’s-eye!
Paprika proved rich in vitamin C, and supply was abundant: Hungary abounds with Hungarian peppers, you may recall.
Vitamin C’s use was later popularized by Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel laureate who believed firmly in its therapeutic potential.
But back to Szent-Györgyi. ... You can read more about him in this profile by the National Library of Medicine. After all, Sept. 16 is Szent-Györgyi’s birthday, not Pauling’s.
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--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch
