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What Is the Origin of the Word Photosynthesis?

Like many modern scientific terms, "photosynthesis" is a word with Greek roots. However, the two Greek words that comprise it -- "photo" and "synthesis" -- never occurred together in ancient Greek. The term was coined in the late 19th century and was intended to replace a more general term, "assimilation," which was used to describe many processes in living organisms in addition to what is now called photosynthesis.

Discovery of Photosynthesis
- The occurrence and process of photosynthesis was not even suspected until the late 17th century, when it was first suggested that plants might derive some of their nutrition from the atmosphere. Another 50 years would pass before anyone would suggest light from the sun might also be important. However, research into the process by which this might take place did not take off until the 19th century, when chlorophyll, chloroplasts, and the basics of photosynthesis were investigated.
Scientific Terminology
- As the early scientific community developed out of the culture of natural philosophers, a legacy of respect for the Latin and Greek classical languages stayed with it. Additionally, because these languages remained central to education across Europe and countries influenced by it, they were an important tool for scientists to communicate with one another. Thanks to the respected status and international character of the classical languages, new scientific terms were usually based on roots from these two tongues. Thus, even though the term "photosynthesis" was coined by an American, the use of Greek roots was standard at the time.
Introduction of Terminology
- In 1893, Charles Barnes, an American botanist, published a paper in the Botanical Gazette proposing the terms "photosyntax" or "photosynthesis" to describe the process by which plants use light to construct carbohydrate molecules. He felt a new term was important to distinguish it from various other processes in living organisms -- processes that had been little understood only a century earlier. But by his time, a wealth of research on these processes had been amassed. The literature on "assimilation" had become confused as a result of the many distinct processes still called by the same term.
Community Acceptance
- While Barnes himself preferred the term "photosyntax," "photosynthesis" was the term that met wider approval. Barnes largely blamed a rival professor in botany, Conway MacMillan, for promoting the use of "photosynthesis" instead of "photosyntax." However, both wielded considerable clout at the time, and it was a preference of a broader population, rather than the work of one man, that ultimately determined which term became standard and which faded into the pages of history.

Nature