Urea (Not stinky)

An organic compound must contain a covalently bonded element in addition to carbon (diamond, graphite, and buckywhatever are inorganic) plus at least one C-C or C-H bond. Urea is not an organic compound. Chloroform is, carbon tet ain't, hexachloroethane is.

Leopold Gmelin reported high-temperature reactions of KOH and charcoal in 1825. Justus von Liebig reduced carbon monoxide with molten potassium in 1834. Both synthesized potassium croconate (pale yellow) and rhodizonate (deep yellow). Those were the first organic syntheses from only inorganics. Gmelin predates Friedrich Woehler's urea in 1828.

Science 311(5762) 790 (2006)
"Building Molecules with Carbon Monoxide Reductive Coupling"

Angew. Chemie English 113(9) 1829 (2001)
"Crystal Structure of Potassium Croconate Dihydrate, after 175 Years"

Is mellitic trianhydride, C(12)O(9) a suboxide of carbon? "8^>)

I admit to taking this one on trust as far as Wohler being first, but I still say urea's organic for our purposes here. The line moves depending who you ask. Made some slight changes anyway, though, thanks.

Too bad croconate and rhodizonate aren't more ubiquitous, maybe he would have gotten credit :)

I'll bet playing around with various 19th century chemicals they stumbled on some adenine (an HCN pentamer) and carbohydrate (spontaneously formed at ppm level in solutions of formaldehyde) by accident way earlier. Polymerization of aqueous HCHO in the presence of Ca(OH)2, called the formose reaction, actually dates back to the 1860's.

Nice Blog....

Another cool use of Urea...The Urea Breath Test. Bacically, isotopically labelled urea is used to detect for H. Pylori, a bacterium implicated in many types of ulcers. This involves swallowing the labelled urea and looking for its conversion to CO2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea_breath_test

I believe that while Uncle Al may be technically correct*, he is wrong. Woehler is indeed, properly, regarded as the father of Organic Chemistry. At the time, urea was considered an organic compound. Furthermore,it was held that there existed a vital force within live bodies (animals, plants, etc) and this force was required to create organic compounds such as urea. It was Woehler's synthesis that made it clear that this doctrine was wrong, and this, historicaly speaking, led to further experiments and the complete overthrow of the doctrine of Vitalism. While it is possible that someone else was 'first' in a technical sense (maybe a caveman stumbled on such a 'first'), it was Woehler's accomplishment that was causally important.

* "An organic compound must contain..." I say maybe because I don't know where this definition could have come from. It seems overly legalistic, and useful only in a legal/patent context. But I may be wrong.

Actually, even the significance is contested (walled content). Here's a quote:

Thus by 25 years ago, science historians generally agreed that vitalism�s demise within chemistry was not directly related to W�hler�s discovery but, rather, was due to gradually conflicting observations. Some modern historians date the death-knell of Vitalism to 1845, with Kolbe�s synthesis of artificial acetic acid from purely inorganic starting materials. This was probably the true end to chemical Vitalism, but popular science mythology does not give credit to Kolbe. Kopp�s own definitive history about W�hler�s synthetic urea, though possibly overeager, was written two years earlier.

Carl Scheele reported the synthesis of HCN in 1783 by the reaction of Prussian blue (Ferric ferrocyanide) with sulfuric acid. This is considered by some (e.g. Albert Eschenmoser ) to be the first example of organic synthesis. HCN contains a C-H bond which is usually what defined an organic compound; carbon compounds like CO and CO2 are usually not considered to be organic compounds. Scheele was also responsible for some of the first examples of the isolation and purification of organic compounds: citric acid, lactic acid, tartaric acid etc.

"...science historians generally agreed that vitalism's demise within chemistry was...due to gradually conflicting observations."

This is true, and certainly it would be naive to assume that one observation could overthrow an entire theory. But the issue is who would be properly regarded as the father of organic chemistry. Woehler was the one who STARTED this progression of "gradually conflicting observations" and his synthesis marks the beginning of the end of Vitalism. Kolbe's acetic acid synthesis occured later (about 20 years later, I believe), and indeed was probably a more significant factor in Vitalism's downfall. So one could argue that Kolbe was causally more important, but Woehler was the first in that causal chain.*

* The issue of relative significance is a different issue from being causally the first. As an example: Chauvin is regarded as the first to disover Methathesis, but Grubbs and Schrock would probably be regarded as more important. Chauvin led to Grubbs and Schrock which led to the explosion in the use of Metathesis. Despite being a jerk, Chauvin IS the Father of Metathesis.

"Carl Scheele reported the synthesis of HCN in 1783..."

There is no way he could have known what he had (this was prior to Lavoisier, Dalton), and therefore this particular discovery didn't lead to anything.

This isn't to take away from the great discoveries and awesomeness of Scheele.

"Carl Scheele reported the synthesis of HCN in 1783..."
"this particular discovery didn't lead to anything"
Where do you think Wohler got the starting material for his synthesis of urea? OCN- salts were not available at the time from Aldrich.

"Where do you think Wohler got the starting material for his synthesis of urea?"

So your argument is that Scheele is the father of organic chemistry because he made Woehler's starting material?

Certainly, earlier discoveries make possible later discoveries; however, if one used such methodology to determine "the first" for anything, there would be a near infinite regress. But the question is, what was the pivotal event that brought about the birth and growth of Organic Chemistry as we know it today? This event was the overthrow of Vitalism and this began with Woehler's synthesis in the late 1820's. (No one looked at Scheele's work back then and said, "WOW, HCN, maybe a life force isn't required to make organic compounds." For one thing, they wouldn't have been able to concieve of such a concept, i.e. HCN, until after Lavoisier and Dalton. Also, it is doubtful that they would have even recognized HCN as organic, which meant something entirely different back then than Uncle Al's definition he gave above.) However, with Woehler, the ground work was layed and scientists did say such things for the first time. (BTW, If anyone has any evidence that any significant questioning of Vitalism began earlier than 1828, I would be very interested.)

Additionally, Scheele was 40 years removed from a more or less gradual progression. Late 1820's (Woehler) Following this was Kolbe (and various other minor players from the 1830's and 1840's), and then Berthelot's very prolific work in the 1850's-- where he made something like 10X more organic compounds than had been synthesized in all of the previous years since the big bang (e.g. methanol, ethanol, methane, benzene, acetylene). Then Perkin, Meyer, Fisher, Grignard, Woodward, Sharpless, etc, etc. More or less, since Woehler, a steady stream of disoveries in Organic Chemistry.

I knew nothing about Urea until my podiatrist told me to buy a high % urea cream for my heels.