Unknown photographer · Public domain

Casimir Funk isolated vitamin B1 from rice bran in 1911 and, the following year, coined the word "vitamines" for the class of nutrients his work implied — proving that diseases like beriberi, pellagra, and rickets were caused not by germs but by the simple absence of specific compounds in the diet. The English chemist Frederick Gowland Hopkins had guessed at such "accessory food factors" earlier, but it was the Polish-born Funk who gave the idea its theory and its name.