Who first isolated morphine?

Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner (Neuhaus, Prussia, 19 June 1783 – Hamelin, Prusia, 20 February 1841) was a German pharmacist and a pioneer of alkaloid chemistry. He was the first to isolate morphine from opium.

He wondered about the medicinal properties of opium, which was widely used by 18th-century physicians. In a series of experiments, performed in his spare time and published in 1806, he managed to isolate an organic alkaloid compound from the resinous gum secreted by "Papaver somniferum"--the opium poppy.

He found that opium with the alkaloid removed had no effect on animals, but the alkaloid itself had 10 times the power of processed opium. He named that substance morphine, after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, for its tendency to cause sleep.

He spent several years experimenting with morphine, often on himself, learning its therapeutic effects as well as its considerable dangers.

As he predicted, chemists and physicians soon grew interested in his discoveries. Serturner's crystallization of morphine was the first isolation of a natural plant alkaloid. It sparked the study of alkaloid chemistry and hastened the emergence of the modern pharmaceutical industry.

Other researchers soon began to isolate similar alkaloids from organic substances, such as strychnine in 1817, caffeine in 1820 and nicotine in 1828. In 1831, Serturner won a lucrative prize for the discovery.