Inventors and Scientific Discoveries

Willard Libby is the scientist credited with the invention of radiocarbon dating in the late 1940s, for which he later won a Nobel Prize.

Ernst Mayr was a renowned evolutionary biologist and taxonomist who held the title of Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University.

Eduard Suess coined the term biosphere in 1875. According to him, bio referred to the life and sphere referred to everything around. Hence, biosphere includes atmosphere, lithosphere and geosphere.

Eduard Suess, an Austrian geologist, coined the term 'biosphere' in 1875 to describe the place on Earth's surface where life dwells.

Malate or $k^{+}$ ion pump hypothesis theory was put forward by Levitt $(1974)$. It is considered as the modern one. It states that the change in the turgor pressure of the guard cells regulates the opening and closing of stomata. It appears to be an active mechanism which needs ATP.

Some stomata open during night and remain closed during the day time. This type of stomatal is called scotoactive stomata. They occur in succulents e.g., Cactus, Bryophyllum. This mechanism was explained by Nishida (1963).

Porometer is an instrument for measuring the area of the stomatal openings of a leaf by the amount of a gas passing through a given area of it. The porometer was first described as a method for investigating stomatal movement by Darwin.

Scotoactive stomata are the stomata, which open in dark and close during the day time. Scotoactive stomata occur in succulents, e.g., cactus and bryophyllum. Succulents perform crassulacean acid metabolism or CAM in their photosynthesis. Nishida explained in succulents during night there is accumulation of organic acids, whereas during day time the organic acids breakdown releasing carbon dioxide, which keeps stomata closed. During night, because of formation of organic acids carbon dioxide is consumed and concentration of carbon dioxide is less.

In 1860 Julius von Sachs, Professor of Botany at the University of Wurzburg, published the first standard formula for a nutrient solution that could be dissolved in water and in which plants could be successfully grown. The technique was termed “nutriculture”.  Now it is called Hydroponics.
Answer is B.

Wilhelm Knop is credited with developing nutrient solutions that demonstrated the essential role of inorganic minerals in plant growth.

On the Origin of Species (more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.

Ernst Mayr is widely credited with the development of the Biological Species Concept, which defines a species as a group of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.

In 1924, the Russian biochemist Aleksandr Oparin proposed that life could have developed through gradual chemical evolution in a “primordial soup.” This theory was independently proposed by English geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, also in the 1920s. This theory states that a mixture of organic molecules could form in an oxygen-deprived environment through the random interactions of small molecules, with energy provided by sunlight and lightning. This theory is not without controversy.