Historical Louis-Camille Maillard

Maillard (1878-1936) qualified in medicine from the University of Nancy in 1903, where he joined the Chemical Division of the School of Medicine.2 In 1914, he became the head of a biological group in the Chemical Laboratory, University of Paris, and, in 1919, he was appointed as the Professor of Biological and Medical Chemistry at the University of Algiers. 

Maillard was interested in Emil Fischer s synthesis of peptides, which he thought, correctly as it turned out, could be achieved under milder conditions by the use of glycerol.3 This logically led on to the use of sugars as another type of polyhydroxy compound to bring about the formation of peptides and to the discovery that 

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Ten years ago Kawamura (1 ) published a brief historical review on this reaction in memory of the sixtieth anniversay of its first report by Louis-Camille Maillard (2. The first Maillard paper was presented on January 8, 1912, by Armand Emile Justin Gautier (1837-1920) in a session of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Six weeks earlier (November 27, 1911) a remarkable study was reported by Maillard (3) on the condensation of amino acids by use of glycerol. The method of peptide synthesis by Emil Hermann Fischer (1835-1919) was known to him. However, Maillard searched for milder conditions. 

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