Historical Background

Jokichi Takamine (picture from MDD: Modern Drug Discovery)

Jokichi Takamine, a Japanese chemist who relocated to the United States, is the man who gets the credit for being the first man to isolate adrenaline. Though Takamine gets the credit, it was actually his partner Keizo Uenaka who first isolated adrenaline. Uneaka was Takamine's hired chemist from Japan and one night when he was still working in the lab by himself, Uenaka first discovered the crystalline form of adrenaline. The reason why Takamine gets the credit for Uenaka's discovery is because on November 5, 1900 Takamine applied for a patent with the name "Glandular Extractive Product". A few months later in 1901, Takamine presented one document to the New York Medical Society and another document to the Society of Chemical Industry. As well as these papers, Takamine also wrote and published two more papers about his discoveries over the years with working in the lab. As a result of this, Takamine was given the right to use Adrenaline as a trademark. While all of this was going on, another scientist that works with Takamine was busy working away trying to find the correct chemical structure of adrenaline that he finds and publishes while also advertising the compound under the name Adrenaline.

Although everyone had thought that Takamine, or shall I say Uenaka, found the pure crystallized version of adrenaline, he did not. In fact he found an impure version of adrenaline and Takamine's colleague who published the chemical structure of adrenaline was also wrong.