Charles Joseph Tanret (9 August 1847 in

Joinville Joinville () is the largest city in Santa Catarina, in the Southern Region of Brazil. It is the third largest municipality in the southern region of Brazil, after the much larger state capitals of Curitiba and Porto Alegre. Joinville is also a ...

, France – 10 July 1917 in Paris) was a French pharmacist and chemist. He notably studied the chemistry of sugars, reporting his observations of the mutarotation of glucose in 1895. He also identified

quebrachitol Quebrachitol is a naturally occurring optically active cyclitol, a cyclic polyol. It can be found in ''Allophylus edulis'' and in the serum left after the coagulation of the ''Hevea brasiliensis'' latex in the operation of rubber tapping. It is al ...

in 1887 from the bark of ''

Aspidosperma quebracho ''Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco'', commonly known as Quebracho blanco, kebrako, or white quebracho, is a South American tree species, native to Brazil, northern Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It must not be confused with other specie ...

''. His son Georges was also a pharmacist, specialist of plant chemistry. Georges Tanret identified an alkaloid ( galegine) from ''

Galega officinalis ''Galega officinalis'', commonly known as galega or goat's-rue, is an herbaceous plant in the subfamily Faboideae of the legume family Fabaceae. It is native to parts of northern Africa, western Asia and Europe, but is widely cultivated and natu ...

'' that was evaluated in clinical trials in patients with diabetes in the 1920s and 1930s.Bailey CJ, Campbell IW, Chan JCN, Davidson JA, Howlett HCS, Ritz P (eds). 2007. Metformin: the Gold Standard. A Scientific handbook; Chichester: Wiley. Chapter 1: Galegine and antidiabetic plants

References

External links

Charles Joseph Tanret on Société d'Histoire de la Pharmacie website (French)
* Charles Joseph Tanret on fr.wikipedia.com (French) 19th-century French chemists 1847 births 1917 deaths 20th-century French chemists {{France-chemist-stub