...Richard D. Semba Vitamin A is essential for normal growth, reproduction, immunity, and vision. The characterization of vitamin A spanned a period of about 130 years. During this long, incremental process, there is no single event that can be called the ‘discovery’ of vitamin A. The physiologist...

... of the identification of vitamins might deserve a separate chapter on nomenclature alone. It was during that remarkable era of vitamin discovery in the first half of the 20th century that this group of disparate substances – albeit now with the common name ‘vitamins’ – were all identified and enumerated alphabetically...