Gabriel Bertrand

Who was Gabriel Bertrand?

Gabriel Bertrand was a French pharmacologist, biochemist and bacteriologist.

Bertrand introduced into biochemistry both the term “oxidase” and the concept of trace elements.

The laccase, a polyphenol oxidase and an enzyme oxidating urishiol and laccol obtained from the lacquer tree, was first studied by Gabriel Bertrand in 1894. In 1904, Casimir Funk earned his Ph.D. after completing his dissertation on how to prepare two stilbene dyes, brazilin and hematoxylin. He then went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he studied organic bases and amino acids under Gabriel Bertrand. During his time in Paris, Funk experimented with laccol, a phenol that caused him to suffer painful swelling.

Bertrand's rule is the fact that the dose–response curve for many micronutrients is non-monotonic, having an initial stage of increasing benefits with increased intake, followed by increasing costs as excesses become toxic.

Bertrand was made a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine in 1931.