John Jacob Abel to successfully isolate the neutral base of epinephrine by adding ammonium to highly concentrated extract, a method Abel himself tried but failed due to the use of low concentration of extract. After Takamine's success, Abel himself remarked, with great candor, "The efforts of years on my part in this once mysterious field of suprarenal, medullary biochemistry, marred by blunders as they were, eventuated, then, in the isolation of the hormone not in the form of the free base but in that of its monobenzoyl derivative." Together with L.G. Rowntree and B.B. Turner, Abel devised what they called a "vividiffusion" apparatus,
Abel Seyler lived more conventional lives than him. They inherited the Andreae pharmacy from their uncle on his death in 1793. In 1772 Abel Seyler married the actress Friederike Sophie Seyler (formerly married Hensel). They had no children. The principal founder of biochemistry and molecular biology, Felix Hoppe-Seyler, was an adopted son of his grandson. Seyler was a godfather of Jacob Herzfeld (born 1763), known as the first Jewish stage actor in Germany, when the latter converted to Christianity in 1796. Abel Seyler Abel Seyler (23 August 1730, Liestal – 25 April 1800, Rellingen) was a Swiss-born theatre director and former merchant