WENT, FRIEDRICH AUGUST FERDINAND CHRISTIAN

(b. Amsterdam, Netherlands, 18 June 1863; d. Wassenaar, near The Hague, Netherlands, 24 July 1935), botany.

Went studied at the University of Amsterdam under Hugo de Vries. As director of a sugarcane experimental station in Kagok, Java (1891-1896), he worked on cane diseases and on the physiology of sugarcane. He established that the first product of photosynthesis is sucrose and determined the sugar concentrations in leaves and stalk during the lifetime of the cane, thereby providing the basis for a method of determining the maturity of cane in the field that is still used. This early experience resulted in a lifelong interest in and promotion of research in tropical agriculture.

Twice during his tenure as professor of botany and director of the botanical laboratory and gardens at the University of Utrecht (1896-1934), the laboratory was rebuilt and enlarged, making it one of the most modern of botanical institutions and a model for many other laboratories.

Went’s personal research became increasingly limited because of very heavy teaching duties, but his work (1901) on enzyme formation in the fungus Monilia (now named Neurospora) was the forerunner of very fruitful work on the biochemistry of Neurospora. In later years he became interested in the anatomy and embryology of Podostemonaceae, a family of flowering plants found only in rapids and waterfalls, on which he published extensively (1908-1929).

Went exerted his greatest influence on the development of botany in the first half of the twentieth century through the research of his graduate students. The “Utrecht school” became known for work in many areas of plant physiology, especially temperature responses, tropisms, and auxins. When F. F. Blackman published his important paper on physiological processes and limiting factors (1905), the experimental basis for his theory was meager. Some of the most significant support for Blackman’s theory of limiting factors was supplied by Went’s students during the next twentyfive years.

The second major contribution of the Utrecht school was work on tropisms, spearheaded by Blaauw’s thesis on phototropism. This work for the first time placed tropisms—the responses of plants to environmental factors such as light and gravity—on a quantitative basis, and it became clear that responses to light were explainable strictly as photochemical reactions. An extension of this work explained phototropic responses as differential growth reactions to differential light intensities.

This reduction of phototropism to differential growth initiated the third major research contribution of the Utrecht school, the work on auxins. Went and his colleague Fritz Kögl were the most effective advocates of introducing the concept of plant growth hormones into European biological circles, and the eight theses on auxin published at Utrecht between 1927 and 1934 formed the basis for modern ideas about plant hormones.

Went, especially as president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (Amsterdam), contributed immeasurably to improved international understanding among scientists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Went’s works, published mainly in the Verhandelingen of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, include De jongste toestanden der vacuolen (Amsterdam. 1886), his doctoral diss.; and Untersuchungen über Podostemaceen, 3 pts. (Amsterdam 1910-1926); he also collaborated on vol. II of the German ed. of S. P. Kostychev, Lehrbuch der Pflanzenphysiologie (Berlin, 1931). For a list of his writings, see Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (Afd. natuurkunde), Naamregister van de Verhandelingen en Bkjdragen, I (Amsterdam, 1943), 65; and II (1944), 148–149.

There is an obituary by J. van der Hoeve, in Verslagen van de gewone vergadering der Afdeeling natuurkunde, K. Akademie van Wetenschappen,44 (1935), 90–95.

F. W. Went