Which chemist synthesized urea, ending 'vitalism' in 1828?

Friedrich Wöhler, who was trying to make ammonium cyanate, an ordinary mineral salt, and got urea instead - a substance until then obtained only from urine and understood to be a product of living things. He wrote to his old teacher that he could make urea without needing a kidney, man or dog.

Vitalism held that organic compounds required a vital force present only in life, so the two chemistries were separate in principle. Wöhler's accident showed that the same atoms rearranged gave you an organic molecule from an inorganic one, and organic chemistry became a branch of chemistry rather than a branch of biology.

Historians have since argued the moment is overstated. Vitalism did not collapse in 1828; Wöhler's starting material had itself come originally from animal matter, several chemists including Berzelius were unconvinced, and the doctrine faded over decades as syntheses accumulated. What the reaction did prove immediately was something else Wöhler noticed and could not explain - that ammonium cyanate and urea have identical formulas and different properties, which is the discovery of isomerism, and arguably the more important result.