What do anemic dogs, raw liver, three Nobel prizes, cobalt and bacterial fermentation have in common? The answer: vitamin B12 or, more specifically, cobalamin. The path to its discovery started with a fatal blood disorder that was first described in 1855 and became known as Addison’s pernicious anemia. Some 70 years later, Minot and Murphy (1926) successfully applied a treatment to humans that G.H. Whipple had found successful in curing anemic dogs: large quantities of raw liver. Whipple, Minot and Murphy were later awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934 for this landmark discovery.
While consuming large quantities of raw liver may be acceptable to dogs, it most certainly was not for people, so a massive effort was focused on discovering the element in liver that cured pernicious anemia as well as a route for its production. For that, a Nobel Prize was awarded to Dorothy Hodgkin (1964) for characterizing the crystalline structure and to Robert Woodward (1965) for chemical synthesis of the anti-anemic factor that we know as vitamin B12.
