Caffeine

Caffeine's isolation emerged from an unlikely encounter between a young chemist and Germany's most famous poet. The discovery demonstrates how scientific networks and personal connections could accelerate research in an era before formal research programs.

In 1819, twenty-five-year-old Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge was studying under the chemist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner at the University of Jena. Runge had been investigating belladonna extract and its effects on the pupil of the eye. Döbereiner was a friend and correspondent of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who in his later years had turned his formidable intellect to the sciences.

Goethe invited Runge to demonstrate the pupil-dilating effect of belladonna. Using a cat as the experimental subject, Runge showed how the extract caused dramatic pupil dilation. Goethe was sufficiently impressed to hand the young chemist a small box of Arabian mocha beans—a gift from a Greek acquaintance. 'You can also use these in your investigations,' Goethe suggested.

Within months, Runge had isolated the world's first pure caffeine sample. He named the compound 'Kaffein' after the coffee from which he extracted it, using precipitation and recrystallization techniques. His results appeared in 1820's 'Neueste Phytochemische Entdeckungen' (Latest Phytochemical Discoveries).

The discovery was independently replicated in 1821 by French chemists Pierre Jean Robiquet and the team of Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou—all working without knowledge of Runge's or each other's work. This convergent discovery demonstrated that the techniques and knowledge for isolating plant alkaloids had reached a critical threshold. The famous Swedish chemist Berzelius later acknowledged Runge's priority.

Runge's later career was marked by brilliant discoveries and bitter disappointments. He identified the first coal tar dye (aniline blue), developed paper chromatography, and isolated pyrrole, quinoline, phenol, and atropine. But he left his industrial chemistry position in 1852 under acrimonious circumstances and died in obscurity and poverty in 1867. The caffeine isolation that began with Goethe's gift of coffee beans remained his most celebrated achievement—the compound that would eventually power modern productivity culture.