Jean Senebier

Botanist and pastor, born in Geneva, SW Switzerland. He studied theology, and was ordained in 1765. He was pastor of a church at Chancy, Switzerland (1769), then city librarian of Geneva from 1773. He studied botany, and in 1782 first demonstrated the basic principle of photosynthesis, which he published in Physiologie végétale (1800). He also wrote an important literary work on Geneva (1786).

Jean Senebier (May 6, 1742 - July 22, 1809) was a Swiss pastor who wrote many works on vegetable physiology.

He was born at Geneva, and is remembered for his contributions to the understanding of the influence of light on vegetation.

Though Marcello Malpighi and Stephen Hales had shown that much of the substance of plants must be obtained from the atmosphere, no progress was made until Charles Bonnet observed on leaves plunged in aerated water bubbles of gas, which Joseph Priestley recognized as oxygen.

The standard botanical author abbreviation Seneb. is applied to species he described.