February 27, 1879 – Discovering Saccharin

Today is the 128th anniversary of the discovery of saccharin, the world's oldest artificial sweetener, thanks to inadequate hand washing. On February 27, 1879, researchers at Johns Hopkins University accidentally discovered the non-nutritive sweetener while studying the oxidation of o-toluenesulfonamide, a coal tar derivative. After a long day in the laboratory, Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg returned to their homes for dinner. Remsen, a chemistry professor and former physician, noticed that his dinner rolls tasted unusually sweet and then bitter. When his wife argued that there was nothing odd about their evening meal, Remsen tasted his hands and concluded that the strange flavor was a residual laboratory chemical. Constantine Fahlberg, a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins, also noticed that his meal was unusually sweet, and reached the same conclusion after tasting his hands and arms. The next day, Remsen and Fahlberg returned to the laboratory and "taste tested" their unwashed equipment to confirm the source of the sweetness.

The substance that Remsen and Fahlberg discovered is hundreds of times sweeter than granulated sugar (sucrose), but flavored with a metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. Fittingly, the researchers named their discovery "saccharin", a derivative of the Sanskrit word (sharkara) for sugar and gravel. Unlike common table sugar, however, saccharin is calorie-free and lacks nutritional value. Unlike artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin stores well, remains stable when heated, and does not react chemically with other food ingredients. In its acidic form, saccharin is not particularly water-soluble. As a sodium salt or calcium salt, saccharin dissolves well in water and can be readily excreted by the human body. Although Remsen and Fahlberg originally produced saccharin from toluene, modern methods use the successive reaction of anthranilic acid with nitrous acid, sulfur dioxide, chlorine, and then ammonia. Today, saccharine is also known as ortho-sulfobenzoic acid imide.

The story of saccharine began sweetly, but soon turned bitter. Although Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg jointly published their discovery in 1880, Fahlberg patented and mass-produced the sweetener on his own, amassing a personal fortune along the way. "Fahlberg is a scoundrel," Remsen later said. "It nauseates me to hear my name mentioned in the same breath with him."

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Remsen

http://www.jhu.edu/gazette/2000/sep1100/11remsen.html

http://p2.www.britannica.com/eb/article-9064643/saccharin#165773.hook

http://www.saccharin.org/history