Senebier was born in Geneva, the son of a wealthy merchant. He wrote extensively on plant
physiology and was one of the major early pioneers of photosynthesis research. Senebier also published on the experimental method, first in 1775, and then in an expanded work, in 1802. His precise definition of the experimental method anticipated the work of noted French physiologist
Claude Bernard fifty years later. Senebier also served as chief librarian of the Republic of Geneva. Senebier also found that the amount of oxygen produced is roughly proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide available to the plant. jointly with fellow Swiss naturalist
François Huber. Senebier arrived at his best known achievement, his demonstration that plants take up atmospheric carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, based entirely on the
Phlogiston theory of chemistry, and only in his later works did he reformulate his conclusions in terms of the more modern, oxygen chemistry developed by
Antoine Lavoisier and colleagues. This discovery by Senebier regarding gases ranks as one of the last of the important early discoveries in the unraveling of the fundamental chemical processes of photosynthesis.
Marcello Malpighi and
Nehemiah Grew, working independently in the late seventeenth century, and
Stephen Hales in the early eighteenth century, had provided evidence that the atmosphere was important to plants, but he did not identify the gas. Then, in 1775, English
chemist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen (which he named "dephlogisticated air"), and, just a few years later, in 1779, Dutch physician and researcher
Jan Ingenhousz demonstrated that the bubbles of gas observed by Bonnet on submerged leaves consisted of this same gas. Ingenhousz also published the first convincing evidence that leaves produce this gas only in sunlight. Senebier was a close friend of noted Genevan geologist and meteorologist
Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and was instrumental in the education of Horace-Bénédict's son
Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure. Senebier trained the young man in Lavoisier's system of chemistry, which Nicolas-Théodore later applied in important plant-nutrition studies of his own. In April 1809, Senebier became a Correspondent of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The standard
botanical author abbreviation Seneb. is applied to
species Senebier described. ==Works==