Thursday, September 15, 2011

Google, the portal to all knowledge


Google informed me that September 16th is Albert Szent-Gyorgyi 118th's birthday. I remember this name for the usual reason: Szent-Gyorgyi first isolated ascorbic acid aka vitamin C. This was important to me because of a science fair project that I did to discover which had more vitamin C: orange juice from a container or orange juice that had been left out. Essentially, does vitamin C evaporate? Incidentally it does, and also iodine (the reagent used to measure amounts of vitamin C) stinks and stains like crazy. But more importantly, I remember this funny story about Szent-Gyorgyi:

After isolating vitamin C, Szent-Gyorgyi wrote a paper on the sugar acid. As sugars usually end in an -ose suffix and the unknown state of the molecule, he wanted to call it "ignose" ("ig" as in ignorant). After having that rejected, he resubmited it with the name Godnose. Who says scientists don't have a sense of humour? If you've got time, I've got a great one about Niels Bohr.

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