Payens Investigations of Natural Polymers

Although Frenchman Anselm Payen investigated several natural polymers and polymer-rich materials (3, 11, 14, 23, 40, 41, 43, 44), he may be remembered most for his pioneering research on cellulose, the most abundant polymer and organic material in the world. Cellulose, manufactured by nature at the incredible rate of perhaps 200 billion tons per year worldwide, is the principal component of materials (cotton, linen, jute, wood, etc.) that have been known and used since earliest times (21, 45). 

Nevertheless, many thousands - perhaps millions - of years passed before cellulose was discovered and investigated as a distinct and separate chemical entity. The story of another natural polymer, starch, is similar. Starch, a major component of many foods and feed, sustained humans and other animals for thousands of years before being identified and treated as a chemical substance. 

It was as late as the 19th century that the brilHant researches of Anselm Payen played a major role in bringing about a better understanding of these polysaccharides. 

Payen s classic work on cellulose was described in his articles entitled Study of the Composition of the Natural Tissues of Plants and of Lignin and Concerning a Means for Isolating the Elemental Tissue of Wood which were published in 1838 in Comptes Rendus. Payen treated plant tissues, cotton linters, root tips, and various woods with chemicals, including nitric acid in some instances, followed by extraction with ammonia or alkali, water, and solvents, to obtain a fibrous substance, named cellulose. He demonstrated that this elemental product from plant 

Payen observed that, to isolate cellulose, it is necessary to remove substances having a higher percentage of carbon than cellulose. Payen called these substances incrusting materials. These materials were later (1857) designated by Schulze as lignin, a term used previously by Candolle (41). 

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