Jean Senebier
Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist Jean Senebier (25 May 1742<ref>"Archives d’Etat de Genève, Registre de la paroisse protestante du Temple Neuf ou de la Fusterie: 1) Baptêmes du 4 mai 1740 au 6 janvier 1765. 2) Mariages du 25 juillet 1740 au 8 décembre 1764", [1], Image 22, last entry.</ref> – 22 July 1809<ref>Template:Cite EB1911</ref><ref>Senebier, Jean, in the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.</ref>) was a Genevan Calvinist pastor and naturalist. He was chief librarian of the Republic of Geneva. A pioneer in the field of photosynthesis research, he provided extensive evidence that plants consume carbon dioxide and produced oxygen. He also showed a link between the amount of carbon dioxide available and the amount of oxygen produced and determined that photosynthesis took place at the parenchyma, the green fleshy part of the leaf.
BiographyEdit
Senebier was born in Geneva, the son of a wealthy merchant.<ref name="Bay">Template:Cite journal</ref> He wrote extensively on plant physiology and was one of the major early pioneers of photosynthesis research.<ref name="Translator's Introduction">Template:Cite book</ref> Senebier also published on the experimental method, first in 1775,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and then in an expanded work, in 1802.<ref>Template:Cite book </ref> His precise definition of the experimental method anticipated the work of noted French physiologist Claude Bernard fifty years later.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Senebier also served as chief librarian of the Republic of Geneva.<ref name="Bay"/>
Senebier was greatly influenced by Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet. Senebier was also influenced by the Italian animal physiologist and experimental biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani, several of whose works Senebier translated from Italian into French. Spallanzani's chemical research on bodily functions of animals helped lead Senebier towards studying plant chemistry. Although Senebier's first research on plants was a large study on effects of light, he is remembered mainly for the extensive evidence he provided that carbon dioxide ("fixed air" or "carbonic acid," in the terminology of his day) is consumed by plants in the production of oxygen ("dephlogisticated air"), in the physiological process that later became known as photosynthesis.<ref name="Mémoires physico-chymiques">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Recherches">Template:Cite book</ref> Senebier also found that the amount of oxygen produced is roughly proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide available to the plant.<ref name="Recherches"/> Further, he determined that the green fleshy parts of leaves (the parenchyma) are the sites where carbon dioxide is transformed into oxygen.<ref name="Mémoires physico-chymiques"/> Senebier also correctly concluded that plants use the carbon in carbon dioxide as a nutriment.<ref name="Recherches" /> Senebier did some of his research<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> jointly with fellow Swiss naturalist François Huber.
Senebier arrived at his best known achievement, his demonstration that plants take up atmospheric carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, based entirely on the Phlogiston theory of chemistry, and only in his later works<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> did he reformulate his conclusions in terms of the more modern, oxygen chemistry developed by Antoine Lavoisier and colleagues.<ref name="Kottler">Template:Cite thesis</ref> This discovery by Senebier regarding gases ranks as one of the last of the important early discoveries in the unraveling of the fundamental chemical processes of photosynthesis. Marcello Malpighi and Nehemiah Grew, working independently in the late seventeenth century, and Stephen Hales in the early eighteenth century, had provided evidence that the atmosphere was important to plants,<ref name="Translator's Introduction" /> but further progress in understanding the role of gases in plant physiology awaited discoveries made between 1750 and 1780. In 1754, Charles Bonnet reported that leaves that were plunged in aerated water produced bubbles of gas,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> but he did not identify the gas. Then, in 1775, English chemist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen (which he named "dephlogisticated air"),<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and, just a few years later, in 1779, Dutch physician and researcher Jan Ingenhousz demonstrated that the bubbles of gas observed by Bonnet on submerged leaves consisted of this same gas. Ingenhousz also published the first convincing evidence that leaves produce this gas only in sunlight.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Senebier was a close friend of noted Genevan geologist and meteorologist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and was instrumental in the education of Horace-Bénédict's son Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure. Senebier trained the young man in Lavoisier's system of chemistry, which Nicolas-Théodore later applied in important plant-nutrition studies of his own.<ref name="Kottler" />Template:Rp The younger Saussure would eventually discover the role of water in photosynthesis, thus completing the early chemical research on this subject.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
In April 1809, Senebier became a Correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The standard botanical author abbreviation Seneb. is applied to species Senebier described.
WorksEdit
ReferencesEdit
- Sachs, Geschichte d. Botanik, and Arbeiten, vol. ii.
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation