



PREFACE V'ir^ii,V^>i^y 



A meeting was held at (!atliiil)urg, Tennessee, October 25-29, 

 1955, to discuss some new observations and hypotheses in photosyn- 

 thesis. The present volume owes its existence to the wish of the 

 National Research Council, which sponsored the meeting, and of the 

 National Science Foundation, which supported it financially, to have 

 a record of the proceedings, permitting a greater number of scientists 

 to benefit from the meeting than could be present at Gatlinburg. 



A book of this kind, if it contained only the papers read at the 

 meeting, would offer only the type of information usually supplied 

 by the scientific journals, in which these papers probably would have 

 been published; its only advantage would have been the collection of 

 a number of related articles under one cover. The meeting was held, 

 however, primarilj^ to provide opportunity for extensive discussion; 

 to convey its spirit, the editors decided to reprint more or less verba- 

 tim those parts of the discussion which suggested unsolved problems, 

 or pointed out where different investigators disagree in the interpre- 

 tation of recent observations. The material now contained in the 

 book includes about one-third of the total discussion taken down by 

 the stenotypist. This material has been edited from the point of 

 view of grammar and clarity; for the rest, the remarks have been left 

 unchanged, except where it is expressly stated that the text has been 

 altered or new material added in proof. The reader will find that 

 occasionally, the discussion following a paper returns to subjects al- 

 ready dealt with in connection with earlier papers. Nearly always it 

 is obvious to what problem the riuestions and answers refer, and we 

 did not try to transpose them. Transposition of discussion remarks 

 has been made, however, in a few cases, where a whole paper was 

 transferred in the book, into a group other than that in which it had 

 been presented at the meeting. 



Experience gained at an earlier meeting had taught us that dis- 

 cussions of this kind cannot be profitably extended beyond a period 

 of about five days, and that, on the other hand, this period is not suf- 

 ficient to cover thoroughly all facets of the problem of photosynthesis. 

 The Subcommittee on Photobiology of the National Research Council 

 decided therefore to omit from the agenda, among others, two big 



