February 27: Who Discovered Aspirin?

U.S. Patent No. 644,077 for “Acetylsalicylic Acid,” generally known as aspirin, was assigned on this date in 1900 to Felix Hoffman, a German chemist who worked in the pharmaceutical laboratory of Friedrich Bayer & Co. Nearly half a century later, however, in 1949, a German Jewish chemist, Arthur Eichengrün, would claim that he had instructed Hoffmann to synthesize the compound, which Hoffman had done without even knowing its purpose. While interned in the Terezin concentration camp in 1944, Eichengrün wrote a letter (now in the Bayer archives) staking his claim, but he was unable to pursue the matter before dying in 1949. Eichengrün had left Bayer in 1908 to establish his own factory in Berlin and became a successful industrialist based on his development of other drugs as well as cellulose acetate, acetate silk, and acetate safety film.

“The most reasonable conclusion is that Arthur Eichengrün was telling the truth when he wrote that acetylsalicylic acid was synthesised under his direction and that the drug would not have been introduced in 1899 without his intervention.” —Walter Sneader