Jan Ingenhousz

Jan Ingenhousz was a Dutch-British physiologist, biologist and chemist, born in Breda in 1730, who is best known for showing that light is essential to the way green plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, the process now called photosynthesis. He took his medical degree at Leuven in 1753, studied further at Leiden, and became a skilled inoculator against smallpox in England. In 1768 he was invited to Vienna by Empress Maria Theresa, inoculated members of the Habsburg family and became her court physician. His plant experiments of 1779 followed meetings with Joseph Priestley, and he also found that plants carry out cellular respiration like animals. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1769 and died in 1799.