Photosynthesis: the years of light

This history relates the research into the light events of photosynthesis performed from the end of the 1930s to the present day. It is an important page of the contemporaneous biochemistry since it deals with the discovery and elucidation of the mechanisms converting light energy into chemical energy available to chloroplast metabolism and, at the same time, releasing oxygen from water. The explanation of these mechanisms has been due to the integrated work of several hundreds of biochemists and biophysicists directed towards specific key points which were perceived by several brilliant scientists. Jan Amesz, Daniel Arnon, Mordhay Avron, Fay Bendall, Lou Duysens, Robert Emerson, Robert Hill, Andre Jagendorf, Bessel Kok, Cornelius van Niel, Sam Ruben, Achim Trebst were among the protagonists that laid the foundation of the biochemical and biophysical processes relative to the energy conversion and water photolysis. In the last twenty years, the precious inheritance left by these scientists has enabled to better understand the structure and function of the apparatus controlling the light events of photosynthesis, Photosystems I and II, an exception singularity in the already complex world of biochemistry.