Aspirin to salicylic acid, the active component of willow extract. In 1853, chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt treated sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride to produce acetylsalicylic acid for the first time; in the second half of the nineteenth century, other academic chemists established the compound's chemical structure and devised more efficient methods of synthesis. In 1897, scientists at the drug and dye firm Bayer began investigating acetylsalicylic acid as a less-irritating replacement for standard common salicylate medicines, and identified a new way to synthesize it. By 1899, Bayer had dubbed this drug Aspirin and was selling it around the world. The word
Hippocrates of Chios geometry textbook for many centuries. Hippocrates is believed to have originated the use of letters to refer to the geometric points and figures in a proposition, e.g., "triangle ABC" for a triangle with vertices at points A, B, and C. Two other contributions by Hippocrates in the field of mathematics are noteworthy. He found a way to tackle the problem of 'duplication of the cube', that is, the problem of how to construct a cube root. Like the quadrature of the circle this was another of the so-called three great mathematical problems of antiquity. Hippocrates also invented the technique of