<P> Vitamin C was discovered in 1912, isolated in 1928 and synthesized in 1933, making it the first vitamin to be synthesized . Shortly thereafter Tadeus Reichstein succeeded in synthesizing the vitamin in bulk by what is now called the Reichstein process . This made possible the inexpensive mass - production of vitamin C. In 1934 Hoffmann--La Roche trademarked synthetic vitamin C under the brand name Redoxon and began to market it as a dietary supplement . </P> <P> In 1907 a laboratory animal model which would help to identify the antiscorbutic factor was discovered by the Norwegian physicians Axel Holst and Theodor Frølich, who when studying shipboard beriberi, fed guinea pigs their test diet of grains and flour and were surprised when scurvy resulted instead of beriberi . By luck, this species did not make its own vitamin C, whereas mice and rats do . In 1912, the Polish biochemist Casimir Funk developed the concept of vitamins . One of these was thought to be the anti-scorbutic factor . In 1928, this was referred to as "water - soluble C," although its chemical structure had not been determined . </P> <P> From 1928 to 1932, Albert Szent - Györgyi and Joseph L. Svirbely's Hungarian team, and Charles Glen King's American team, identified the anti-scorbutic factor . Szent - Györgyi isolated hexuronic acid from animal adrenal glands, and suspected it to be the antiscorbutic factor . In late 1931, Szent - Györgyi gave Svirbely the last of his adrenal - derived hexuronic acid with the suggestion that it might be the anti-scorbutic factor . By the spring of 1932, King's laboratory had proven this, but published the result without giving Szent - Györgyi credit for it . This led to a bitter dispute over priority . In 1933, Walter Norman Haworth chemically identified the vitamin as L - hexuronic acid, proving this by synthesis in 1933 . Haworth and Szent - Györgyi proposed that L - hexuronic acid be named a-scorbic acid, and chemically L - ascorbic acid, in honor of its activity against scurvy . The term's etymology is from Latin, "a -" meaning away, or off from, while - scorbic is from Medieval Latin scorbuticus (pertaining to scurvy), cognate with Old Norse skyrbjugr, French scorbut, Dutch scheurbuik and Low German scharbock . Partly for this discovery, Szent - Györgyi was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize in Medicine, and Haworth shared that year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry . </P> <P> In 1957, J.J. Burns showed that some mammals are susceptible to scurvy as their liver does not produce the enzyme L - gulonolactone oxidase, the last of the chain of four enzymes that synthesize vitamin C. American biochemist Irwin Stone was the first to exploit vitamin C for its food preservative properties . He later developed the theory that humans possess a mutated form of the L - gulonolactone oxidase coding gene . </P>

When was vitamin c discovered and by whom