Pierre Jean Robiquet

Pierre Jean Robiquet (born January 13, 1780 in Rennes, died April 1840 in Paris) was a French chemist. Robiquet was at first a naval officer and became a professor at the École de pharmacie in Paris. Notable scientific achievements were among other things his determination of the chemical structures of asparagine (the first amino acid to be identified, from asparagus, in 1806, with Nicolas Louis Vaquelin), cantharidin (1810), the opium alkaloid narcotine (1817), caffeine (1821), alizarin and purpurin (1826), amygdalin ("laetrile") (1830), as well as codeine (1834). Some of these discoveries were made in collaboration with other scientists.

Bibliography

• "Pierre Jean Robiquet", in Louis-Gabriel Michaud, old and modern universal Biography: history alphabetically of the public and private life of all the men with the collaboration of more than 300 scientists and literary men French or foreign, 2e edition, 1843-1865
• C. Warolin, Rev Hist Pharm (Paris). 1999;47(321):97-110. PMID 11625518