Kuhn, Richard (1900-1967)

Austrian-born German chemist who determined the structures of vitamins A, B2, and B6 in the 1930s, having isolated them from cow's milk. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1938 for his research into carotenoids and vitamins, but was unable to receive it until after World War II.

Kuhn was born in Vienna and educated there and at Munich, Germany. In 1929 he became professor at Heidelberg and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm (later Max Planck) Institute for Medical Research, and in 1937 took over the administration of the institute. He was unable to receive his Nobel Prize until 1945.

Kuhn's early research concerned the carotenoids, the fat-soluble yellow pigments found in plants which are precursors of vitamin A.

In the 1940s, Kuhn continued to carry out research on carbohydrates, studying alkaloid glycosides such as those that occur in tomatoes, potatoes, and other plants of the genus Solanum. In 1952, he returned to experiments with milk, extracting carbohydrates from thousands of litres of milk using chromatography. This work led in the 1960s to the investigation of similar sugar-type substances in the human brain.