History of Chlorophyll

The history of chlorophyll is directly related to the history of the discovery of photosynthesis as shown below.

A famous chemist named Joseph Priestley (left) who was English discovered during 1771 that if he put a burning candle under a glass jar that the flame would extinguish after a little while; but when he put a mint plant in the jar with the candle he found that the candle would continue to burn. He also noticed that if he put a mouse in the jar with the mint plant the mouse continued to live as opposed to putting the mouse under the glass jar without a  mint plant.

A Dutchman, Jan Ingenhousz, made the next contribution to photosynthesis. He learned of Priestley's experiments, and spent a summer near London doing over 500 experiments, and he discovered that light or sunlight to be specific plays an important role in the occurrence of photosynthesis. He said..."I observed that plants not only have the faculty to correct bad air in six to ten days, by growing in it...but that they perform this important office in a complete manner in a few hours; that this wonderful operation is by no means owing to the vegetation of the plant, but to the influence of light of the sun upon the plant".

Soon after Jean Senebier (right) working in Geneva noticed that "fixed air" or CO₂. Theodore de Saussure also working in Geneva discovered that water also played a major role in the occurrence of photosynthesis. The last piece of the puzzle of photosynthesis water put in by a German surgeon, Julius Robert Mayer (right), who discovered that all plants convert solar energy received through the leaves into chemical energy that the plant needs to survive. He said..."Nature has put itself the problem of how to catch in flight light streaming to the Earth and to store the most elusive of all powers in rigid form. The plants take in one form of power, light; and produce another power, chemical difference."

The prefix chloro, of chlorophyll does not indicate the presence of chlorine in the molecule; rather chloro comes from the Greek word chloros, which means yellowish green. Therefore chlorophyll was named after the Greek word because it gave plants their green color.