The 24 chapters in this third volume describe discoveries which contribute to the foundations of modern plant biology. The contributors, many of whom personally lit the way, bring readers back in time as if on a journey to retrace the paths and rethink the ideas they followed. These guided tours on how to decipher the natural laws will lead to an appreciation of the development of each field from simple concepts to an advanced multidisciplinary field of today. This volume will be of special interest to botanists, biochemists, plant physiologists and geneticists, and of general interest to those who are still fascinated by how discoveries are made.

Contents:

• The Discovery of the Essential Elements (E Epstein)
• The Discovery of 1-Aminocyclopropane-1-Carboxylic Acid as the Immediate Precursor of Ethylene (D O Adams)
• Discovery of Auxin (Y Masuda & S Kamisaka)
• Non-Reducing Saccharides: Floridosides and Sucrose (J-C Su)
• Chlorophyll Biosynthesis I: From Analysis of Mutants to Genetic Engineering of the Pathway (D von Wettstein)
• Chlorophyll Biosynthesis II: Adventures with Native and Recombinant Enzymes (D von Wettstein)
• Discovery of the Two Parallel Pathways for Isoprenoid Biosynthesis in Plants (H K Lichtenthaler)
• Structure and Biosynthesis of Cellulose. Part I: Structure (A D French)
• Structure and Biosynthesis of Cellulose. Part II: Biosynthesis (D P Delmer)
• The Discovery of Starch Biosynthesis (J Preiss & M N Sivak)
• Seed Storage Proteins from the 1700s to the Present (M Ogawa & T W Okita)
• The Discovery of 2S Albumins as Abundant Storage Proteins in Seeds (A H C Huang & R J Youle)
• The Discovery of Maternal Inheritance of Large Subunit of Rubisco (S-D Kung)
• Chloroplast Cytochromes: Discovery and Characterization (J C Gray)
• Discovery of Plasma Membrane Proton Pumping ATPase: Our Point of View (R T Leonard & T K Hodges)
• Plant Ubiquitin (R D Vierstra)
• Thirty Years of Fun with Antenna Pigment-Proteins and Photochemical Reaction Centers: A Tribute to the People Who Have Influenced My Career (J P Thornber)
• The Discovery of the Heat Shock Response in Plants (P-F L Chang & C-Y Lin)
• Discovery of Photoregulated Gene Expression (J C Watson)
• Organization and Regulation of Nitrogen Fixation Genes: 1974-1995 (S C Shen)
• The Ti-Plasmid and Plant Molecular Biology (J Schell & C Koncz)
• Active Ion Transport in Plants (A J Bloom & A R Taylor)
• Discovery of Chilling Injury (M E Saltveit)
• In Vitro Induced Haploids in Plant Genetics and Breeding (H Hu & X-R Guo)

"The different chapters not only provide excellent overviews into the development of essential discoveries in plant biology, they also help the reader to better understand the background, current status and future direction of the research in each of the areas covered."