The Chemistry of Plant Life

"The Chemistry of Plant Life" by Roscoe Wilfred Thatcher is an early 20th-century scientific book that acts as a basis in plant science for college students, showing the chemical reasons behind how plants grow. It talks about things like how plants get food, how they use sunlight to create energy, and the chemical changes happening inside plant cells. The book begins by explaining it wants to help students learn and also encourage more research into plant chemistry, which was a relatively new field at the time. Thatcher admits that others before him had an impact on his understanding, and mentions the need for more chemists to study plants. The differences between plants and animals are highlighted to show that even though they have different jobs, their chemistry is closely related.