History of biochemistry
The history of biochemistry can be said to have started with the ancient Greeks who were interested in the composition and processes of life, although biochemistry as a specific scientific discipline has its beginning around the early 19th century. Some argued that the beginning of biochemistry may have been the discovery of the first enzyme, diastase (today called amylase), in 1833 by Anselme Payen, while others considered Eduard Buchner's first demonstration of a complex biochemical process alcoholic fermentation in cell-free extracts to be the birth of biochemistry. Some might also point to the influential work of Justus von Liebig from 1842, "Animal chemistry, or, Organic chemistry in its applications to physiology and pathology", which presented a chemical theory of metabolism, or even earlier to the 18th century studies on fermentation and respiration by Antoine Lavoisier.
Etymology of chemistry
There are two main views on the derivation of the word, which agree in holding that it has an Arabic descent, the prefix "al" being the Arabic article. But according to one, the second part of the word comes from the Greek "χημεία", pouring, infusion, used in connexion with the study of the juices of plants, and thence extended to chemical manipulations in general; this derivation accounts for the old-fashioned spellings "chymist" and "chymistry". The other view traces it to "khem" or "khame", hieroglyph "khmi", which denotes black earth as opposed to barren sand, and occurs in Plutarch as "χημεία"; on this derivation alchemy is explained as meaning the "Egyptian art". The first occurrence of the word is said to be in a treatise of Julius Firmicus, an astrological writer of the 4th century, but the prefix al there must be the addition of a later copyist. In English, Piers Plowman (1362) contains the phrase "experimentis of alconomye", with variants "alkenemye" and " alknamye". The prefix "al" began to be dropped about the middle of the 16th century (further details of which are given below).