Glutamic Acid

glutamic acid amino acid. It was identified in 1866 by the German chemist Karl Heinrich Leopold Ritthausen, who was studying proteins in wheat, but he seems to have taken little interest in his discovery. In the early 1900s, the chemist Emil Fischer studied different amino acids and noted that glutamic acid has an insipid and slightly sweet taste. The salts from glutamic acid are called glutamates (q.v.).