Question

Who discovered chlorophyll?
(a) Schimper
(b) Errera
(c) Caventou
(d) Sachs

Answer 1

Hint: he French pharmacist who has discovered chlorophyll is also a co-discoverer of caffeine and strychnine along with Pierre Joseph Pelletier, a French chemist. He also discovered a vital alkaloid which is an important remedy for the disease malaria today.

Complete answer:
Chlorophyll was discovered by Caventou. The green pigment was first isolated and named by Joseph Bienaime Caventou and Pierre Joseph Pelletier. It was 1906 when magnesium was discovered in chlorophyll. This was also the first time when magnesium had been detected in living tissue. It is a green pigment that is found in cyanobacteria, plants, and algae.
In cyanobacteria, chlorophyll is stored in mesosomes while in algae and plants chlorophyll is located in the chloroplast. These are the organelles that conduct photosynthesis enabling plants to absorb solar energy. In Greek ‘khloros’ means pale green and ‘phyllon’ means leaf. The green color of leaf is because of the absorbance of blue color light of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Additional Information:
-A German botanist and phytogeography named Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper coined the term chlorophyll.
-Abraham Leo Errera is known for discovering the presence of glycogen in plants and fungi.

So, the correct answer ‘Caventou.’

Note:
 -Sclerophyll is a kind of vegetation that exhibits short internodes, hard leaves, and a leaf orientation parallel or oblique to direct sunlight.
-Julius Von Sachs is a German botanist. His most important work includes his experiments, development of the concept of photosynthesis, that the starch grains found in leaf chloroplasts are dependent on sunlight.