structural:reformatting, linguistic:voice_change, structural:expansion
Discovery

In 1796, Jean Senebier, a Swiss pastor, botanist, and naturalist, demonstrated that green plants consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen under the influence of light. Soon afterward, Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure showed that the increase in mass of the plant as it grows could not be due only to uptake of CO but also to the incorporation of water. Thus, the basic reaction by which organisms use photosynthesis to produce food (such as glucose) was outlined.