2022 Nobel Prize will be announced soon. As the top prize in the scientific community, most of the results of winning the Nobel Prize are milestones, such as the synthesis ammonia process, the invention of penicillin, the discovery of superconducting materials, the discovery of X-rays, etc. Each of these achievements can be written into textbooks, and each one has profoundly changed human life.
However, the 1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was controversial. The results of winning the Nobel Prize in Physics and Physiology in the same year were Pauli Incompatibility Principle and Penicillin respectively. The former laid the foundation for quantum mechanics , while the latter saved tens of millions of lives, all of which were "epic" achievements. However, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry that year was called "the most popular Nobel Prize in Chemistry in history."
1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was Virtanin, a biochemist from Finnish . His reason for winning was very simple. He invented a method that could store feed for a long time. The method of is actually similar to the pickled vegetables that our Chinese ancestors invented for thousands of years.
Vertanin grew up in Finland. At that time, milk was a very precious food that only rich locals could afford to drink. Vertanin was poor since childhood and could not afford milk at all. His younger brother died of malnutrition at the age of 4. Since then, Vertanin has been determined to change all this.
Finland's main reason for lack of milk is that Finland is located in Arctic Circle , with a cold climate and lack of forage for raising dairy cows in China. Especially in winter, the whole of Finland is covered with snow, and no grass grows. In this environment, the forage for raising dairy cows can only be imported.
Forage itself is inexpensive, but the problem is that fresh forage is very prone to spoilage and rot. Most of the imported forage has deteriorated after a long journey and arrived in Finland. Even without spoiled forage, it is difficult to stick to the end of the entire winter after several weeks of storage. It is precisely because the shelf life of forage is not long that Finland finds it difficult to raise a large number of dairy cows, and it is impossible to provide a continuous source of nutrition for the people in the country.
Vertanin has discovered an interesting phenomenon after a long period of research. He found that if the environment in which the food is located is acidic, the storage time of the food can be greatly extended. At the same time, he also observed that when the milk is fermenting, lactic acid bacteria will make the milk sour. So can the forage fermentation be improved through forage fermentation?
Based on these inspirations, he invented a method to extend the shelf life of forage. This method can be said to be almost exactly the same as our pickled kimchi method. First, the fresh forage is sealed under the preservation of lactic acid bacteria; then, the lactic acid bacteria begin to reproduce in large quantities, and the forage begins to ferment; finally, the lactic acid secreted by the lactic acid bacteria reduces the pH of the forage to below 4.
The acidic environment successfully inhibits the reproduction of spoiled bacteria. This fermented forage has a distinct sour taste of kimchi, and its shelf life is like our Chinese kimchi. It can be stored for more than 1 year.
With this method, Finns can prepare a large amount of forage in advance before winter comes, and the breeding of dairy cows has also emerged in large quantities in Finland, and Finns have completely gotten rid of the situation where they cannot drink milk. Vertanin also applied for invention patents for this method of storing forage, and with the popularity of this method, he suddenly became a local rich man.
, a method of storing forage, is still used on a large scale worldwide today, so the 1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Vertanen. Whether Vertanin's achievements deserve to be awarded the Nobel Prize is still controversial today. Some people believe that the forage storage method invented by Vertanin is similar to the oriental pickled pickles method, and is not innovative; some people believe that although Vertanin's invention has a great influence, it lacks content to promote scientific cognition; others believe that Vertanin's invention changed the modern animal husbandry method and deserves to be the Nobel Prize. What do you think?
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I am a young Tangtang, a doctoral researcher at Fudan. Follow me to learn more about new life knowledge, popular science knowledge and scientific information interpretation!
