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Jan Ingenhousz was a Dutch physiologist, biologist
and chemist.
He studied medicine at the University of Louvain
and graduated in 1752.
After spending some years in several European
capitals in the typical 18th-century tradition,
he settled in London in 1779
Jan Ingenhousz is best known for showing that
light is essential to photosynthesis and thus
having discovered photosynthesis.
He also discovered that plants, like animals,
have cellular respiration.
In his lifetime he was best known for successfully
inoculating the members of the Habsburg family
in Vienna against smallpox in 1768 and subsequently
being the private counsellor and personal
physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa.
A man of varied scientific interests, Ingenhousz
also invented an improved apparatus for generating
large amounts of static electricity and made
the first quantitative measurements of heat
conduction in metal rods
