Wilbur Scoville life and biography

Wilbur Lincoln Scoville (1865 – 1942) was an American pharmacist and is best known for his creation of "The Scoville Organoleptic Test", now standardized as the Scoville scale. He devised the test and scale in 1912 while working at the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company to measure piquancy, or "hotness", of various chile peppers.

The test measured how much a spicy substance would have to be diluted in sugar water before its pungency was no longer noticable. Originally, Scoville ratings were based on human response to progressive dilutions, but contemporary applications employ machines to directly measure amounts of capsaicinoids, the chemicals responsible for the sensation of heat. Bell peppers are considered to have a Scoville rating of zero, that is, lacking any piquancy, whereas habanero peppers have a Scoville rating of 300,000. Pure capsaicin rates at 16 million Scoville units.

The American Pharmaceutical Association awarded Scoville the Ebert Prize in 1922, and the Remington Honor Medal in 1929, though likely these awards had nothing to do with his eponym.

Author of books:
-The Art of Compounding (1895, pharmacology)
-Extracts and Perfumes (pharmacology)

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