Jean Senebier

Who was Jean Senebier?

Jean Senebier was a Swiss pastor who wrote many works on vegetable physiology.

He was born at Geneva, and is remembered for his contributions to the understanding of the influence of light on vegetation.

Though Marcello Malpighi and Stephen Hales had shown that much of the substance of plants must be obtained from the atmosphere, no progress was made until Charles Bonnet observed on leaves plunged in aerated water bubbles of gas, which Joseph Priestley recognized as oxygen. Jan Ingenhousz proved the simultaneous disappearance of carbonic acid; but it was Senebier who clearly showed that this activity was confined to the green parts, and to these only in sunlight, and first gave a connected view of the whole process of vegetable nutrition in strictly chemical terms. He was assisted in his work by François Huber. He proved that plants use carbon dioxide to grow.

The standard botanical author abbreviation Seneb. is applied to species he described.