Chlorophyll Quotes (5 quotes)
La matière verte des végétaux … Nous proposons de lui donner le nom de chlorophyle.
The green matter of plants … We propose to give the name of chlorophyll.
The green matter of plants … We propose to give the name of chlorophyll.
As coauthor with Joseph-Bienaimé Caventou, in 'Sur la Matière verte des Feuilles', Annales de Chimie (1818), 9, 195. Cited in the Oxford English Dictionary as the earliest etymology example given for chlorophyll. Translation by Google.
I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is coloured by “chlorophyll,” which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is coloured green by a thing which is called “green leaf,” we should see more precisely how far we had got.
The word “chlorophyll” is formed from the Greek words for “green” “leaf.” In The Queen of the Air: a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm (1869, 1889), 51.
In the absorption spectrum of chlorophyll the maximum absorption coincides with the maximum energy of the solar spectrum, a remarkable adaptation, however produced, of means to ends.
In A Shorter History of Science (1944), 118.
It is a substance called Chlorophyll, the most wonderful substance in our world. A world without chlorophyll would be a world without the higher forms of life, and in such a world no life, save perhaps that of the lowest bacteria, could possibly endure. In fact, without this remarkable pigment the living world as at present constituted could not exist.
In Life: A Book for Elementary Students (1925, 2013), 28.
We have dominated and overruled nature, and from now on the earth is ours, a kitchen garden until we learn to make our own chlorophyll and float it out in the sun inside plastic mebranes. We will build Scarsdale on Mount Everest.
In The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974, 1979), 108.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
