Today is the birthday of Charles W. Chesnutt, African American writer and activist. He was born in 1858, a few years before the start of the civil war, to free-born parents in Ohio. His parents were of mixed race, resulting in Chesnutt’s light complexion. The mystery surrounding who his grandfathers were, would lead to Chesnutt’s life-long fascination with miscegenation, or mixed-race persons. Struggling to identify with racial groups would become central theme of his work. 

Chesnutt was a lawyer in addition to being a writer, since even back then, writing usually only paid very small bills. Being a professional lawyer was trying, but Chesnutt was fortunate enough to carve out a niche for himself as a court stenographer, making a somewhat lucrative career out of the business.

Chesnutt who said, “The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe”, wrote short stories and novels. Many of his short stories were published by The Atlantic Monthly over a period of 20 years. The success of his stories in magazines allowed him to publish several novels which did well critically.  

He was one of the first authors to discuss the hierarchy that was emerging among the formerly freed slaves and newly-freed slaves. His work allowed readers to better understand life post-slavery and to reach a more just, if not sympathetic, viewpoint. 

And today is the birthday of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, English biochemist, one of the discoverers of vitamins. He showed an early predilection for reading and writing, but when his mother gave him a small microscope as a gift, he was quickly spending his childhood days collecting “specimens” from the nearby seashore to look at through his microscope. 

In school, Hopkins did very well, but still hadn’t made up his mind on what he wanted to do. He tried on a college chemistry course, and ended up doing so well that he was offered an assistant job by toxicologist Thomas Stevenson. This was Hopkins introduction to the effects of chemicals on the human body and his work with Stevenson was used in a handful of legal cases.

Intrigued by the cross between biology and chemistry, he went back to school and got a degree in medicine, so that at age 32 he was teaching physiology ad toxicology at Guy’s Hospital in London. But it still wasn’t quite what he wanted. When he was offered a position at Cambridge to study the chemical aspects of physiology, he jumped at the change of pace. 

While at Cambridge, surrounded by fellow researchers, he helped to discover how lactic acid works in the body as well as the amino acid tryptophan, which Americans generally associate with Thanksgiving Day turkey. 

But it wasn’t until he was in his 50s that he did the work that would earn him a joint Nobel-Prize in 1929.

Around 1911 Hopkins began a series of feeding experiments. He fed young rats a diet of pure proteins, fats, carbs, minerals and water, thinking this would be the most efficient diet. However, he was proved massively incorrect. The rats instead were stunted in their growth and became sickly. This, he concluded, meant there were other unidentified substances in whole foods that were essential for growth and survival. He called these “accessory food factors.” We know these as vitamins.

His work on vitamins indeed proved vital. Armed with the rudimentary knowledge of vitamins, food rationing was looked at with a new lens. During the food shortages of WWI, officials strove to make sure rations included food that had some nutritional content, and food companies began “enriching” their products such as flour and margarine with vitamins. 

 

Laurence Alma-Tadema

 

In summer I am very glad

We children are so small,

For we can see a thousand things

That men can't see at all.

 

They don't know much about the moss

And all the stones they pass:

They never lie and play among

The forests in the grass:

 

They walk about a long way off; 

And, when we're at the sea,

Let father stoop as best he can

He can't find things like me.

 

But, when the snow is on the ground

And all the puddles freeze,

I wish that I were very tall,

High up above the trees.