In 1756, British chemist Joseph Black discovered “fixed air,” now known as carbon dioxide. Some decades later, in 1803, British chemist John Dalton proposed that this "fixed air," produced by respiring animals and absorbed by plants, contains one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms.
By 1858, Scottish chemist Archibald Couper and German chemist August Kekulé suggested that every carbon atom can form chemical bonds with up to four other carbon atoms. Then, in the late 1940s, American chemist Robert Woodward synthesized natural food substances and other organic compounds from simple, inorganic precursors, demonstrating that natural products can indeed be synthesized.
Natural substances fall into two main groups: inorganic materials, like the minerals in rocks, and organic substances—those found in or derived from living things, such as food. After German chemist Friedrich Wöhler showed in 1828 that urea—an organic component of mammalian urine—could be made in the laboratory by reacting inorganic chemicals, there was a surge of research into the nature of organic matter.
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