Frederick Gowland Hopkins

Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins was an English biochemist, born in Eastbourne in 1861, who shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Christiaan Eijkman for the discovery of vitamins. He studied in London at Guy Hospital, taught physiology and toxicology there, and in 1898 joined the Physiological Laboratory at Cambridge, where in 1914 he became the first Professor of Biochemistry. In 1912 his feeding experiments showed that diets of pure proteins, fats, carbohydrates and minerals do not support growth, which led him to propose the accessory food factors later called vitamins. He also discovered tryptophan and glutathione, was president of the Royal Society from 1930 to 1935, and received the Copley Medal in 1926.