Christian Friedrich Bucholz

Christian Friedrich Bucholz (19 September 1770 – 9 June 1818) was a German pharmaceutical chemist who is credited with the isolation of the oleoresin capsaicin in a crude form from chilli peppers using solvent extraction in 1816.

In 1784 he went to apprentice under the Kassel pharmacist Karl Wilhelm Fiedler and in 1794 published his first paper on the crystallization of barium acetate.

[2] In 1808 he was received a doctorate of pharmacy from the University of Rinteln Collegium medicum et sanitatis and in 1810 he became a professor of chemistry at the Erfurt Academy.

In 1816 he published a note on the extraction of a crude compound called capsaicin which was the spicy component of chilly peppers.

This paper was published in the Almanach oder Taschenbuch für Scheidekünstler und Apotheker in 1816[3] and a year later Henri Braconnot found that it could form salts with alkalis and gave it the name capsicin and a pure crystal was extracted by John C. Thresh in 1876 and named as capsaicin.