VITAMIN Organic compounds are thus designated that are necessary for life but that the human body cannot synthesize. The word created her. the Polish biochemist C . Funk vitamyne, for vital amina, but when it was discovered that not all were amines they took out the letter e and vitamin was left. The nomenclature of vitamins was alphabetical, and Elmer McCollum called them A (fat-soluble) and B (water-soluble). Over time, the water-soluble B vitamins, eight chemically distinct, were isolated and numbered. Vitamin A is fat-soluble. .
