Discovery
The word oxytocin was derived from Greek ὀξύς, oxys, and τόκος, tokos, meaning "quick birth", after its uterine-contracting properties were discovered by British pharmacologist Sir Henry Hallett Dale in 1906. The milk ejection property of oxytocin was described by Ott and Scott in 1910 and by Schafer and Mackenzie in 1911.
The nine amino acid sequence of oxytocin was elucidated by Vincent du Vigneaud et al. and by Tuppy in 1953 and synthesized biochemically soon after by du Vigneaud et al. in 1953. Oxytocin was the first polypeptide hormone to be sequenced and synthesized.
Read more about this topic: Oxytocin
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)
“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The gain is not the having of children; it is the discovery of love and how to be loving.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)