Invention Timeline - Rene Joachim Henri Dutrochet, French Naturalist and Physicist; Published His Discovery of “Endosmosis”
b. November 14, 1776 and d. February 4, 1847
French naturalist and physicist. In 1826 he published his discovery of the flow of the sap in plants, i. e., “endosmosis.” He has published a series of essays on physiology, among which are “Observations on the Structure of Feathers” (1819) and “Researches in Endosmosis and Exosmosis” (1828).
Through desolate gorges dirges of despair,
It drove the snow-flakes slantly down the air,
And piled the drifts of snow;
Or whether it breathed soft in vernal hours,
And filled the trees with sap, and filled the grass with flowers.
—Cafmen Nature Triumphale: R. H. Stoddard
Know ye how opens out the seed, and how the plant upgrows,
How, soft and green in sweet springtide, ’tis ere summer’s
close?
How, in the downy covert of the swift-winged swallow’s nest,
Instinct to mother-love expands in the gentle creature’s breast;
And how, beneath the shelter of the fragile, ovate shell,
A winged germ takes life one day to quit its narrow cell?
—Fred Deschamps
1627, November 29-1705, January 17—John Ray lived. He was the father of natural history in England. In 1682 he published “Methodus Planatarum Nova,” in which he first showed the true nature of buds and indicated many of the natural orders now employed by botanists. This was the first decided step towards a natural system of classification. He left a complete classification of insects and a less complete “history” of the group. This is the first classification of animals that can be reckoned both general and grounded in nature.
