ABSTRACT
In 1911, Casimir Funk, a chemist at the Lister Institute in London, obtained a substance from rice bran extracts and gave the name “vitamine” to the antiberiberi principle because it was vital for life and it also had an amine function. In 1926, the vitamin was isolated in crystalline form from rice bran. The identižcation of the structure and the chemical synthesis of the vitamin were accomplished in 1936 by Williams in the United States. The name thiamin was given to this compound because of the presence of sulfur (thio) and amine.
