Google Doodle Celebrates Chemist Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge on Friday

The Google Doodle of Friday raises a coffee cup for the birthday. You may thank for making some discoveries, including one that’s an integral part of our own lives 200 decades later Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge. The German analytical chemist began conducting chemical experiments in a youthful age, differentiating the pupil-dilating effects of belladonna when he splashed a fall of their perennial, also known as deadly nightshade, into his eye. 

But a stimulating is the reason Google will be observing Runge birthday Friday by means of the animated Doodle. For after Runge revealed his belladonna discovery to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he had been invited to test the chemical makeup of java beans, leading a few months later to the identification of caffeine as its active ingredient. 

Born in Hamburg, Germany, on Feb. 8, 1794, Runge earned his doctorate degree from the University of Berlin and went on to teach chemistry in the University of Breslau before 1831, when he moved to work for a chemical company till 1852. His other work included the first coal tar dye (aniline blue) and the first extraction of quinoline, which led to the derivative quinine, a drug used to treat malaria. 

Despite his contributions to chemistry, Runge died at the age of 73 in poverty in 1867.