Charles Joseph Tanret (9 August 1847 in

Joinville Joinville () is the largest city in Santa Catarina (state), Santa Catarina, in the Southern Brazil, Southern Region of Brazil. It is the third largest municipality in the southern region of Brazil, after the much larger state capitals of Curitib ...

, France – 10 July 1917 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

) was a French pharmacist and chemist. He notably studied the chemistry of sugars, reporting his observations of the

mutarotation In stereochemistry, mutarotation is the change in optical rotation of a chiral material in a solution due to a change in proportion of the two constituent anomers (i.e. the interconversion of their respective stereocenters) until equilibrium is re ...

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 a ...

in 1887 from the bark of '' Aspidosperma quebracho''. 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 a herbaceous plant in the subfamily Faboideae of the legume Family (biology), family Fabaceae. It is native species, native to parts of northern Africa, western Asia and Europe, ...

'' 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