Hello everyone, I'm Vitamin C. You've probably heard of me, I'm pretty well-known these days, which is understandable because I'm a very useful vitamin, but that wasn't always the case. I always existed, obviously, but no one knew about me. I had to be discovered, and that didn’t happen until the 20th century. People already knew when they didn’t have me though, because if someone does not consume enough of me, they get scurvy. This means that the person becomes weak and may even die from missing me, which happened to a lot of people in the past, especially sailors who did not eat fresh vegetables and fruit. As scary as this disease sounds, it is very easy to avoid. However, for a long time no one knew that I was behind it, or rather my absence was. Finally, two scientists stepped up in 1937, an English chemist, Norman Haworth, and a Hungarian physician-biochemist, Albert Szent-Györgyi, who finally discovered it and for that reason both received Nobel Prizes in 1937: Haworth (shared with fellow researcher Paul Karrer) in chemistry, and Szent-Györgyi in the physiology-medicine category. This is no coincidence. Albert Szent-Györgyi did research with a scholarship in Cambridge, England and discovered me there, but at that time I was still called hexuronic acid. Haworth determined the structure of this new compound (i.e., me) and gave me a new name: ascorbic acid because scurvy is scorbuticus in Latin. If you eat me, however, you won't get scurvy, which is why I became ascorbuticus, or ascorbic acid. After my discovery, only one question remained: how could I be produced in large quantities? As Albert Szent-Györgyi found out, the answer lay in paprika from Szeged! Indeed, in 1944 they even founded a joint-stock company producing and selling paprika. Albert Szent-Györgyi became a world-famous scientist, but I'm not complaining either. Today, not only does everyone know that I exist and that I am important, but also that without fresh vegetables and fruit your diet cannot be healthy.