In 1860 Ferdinand Gustav Julius von Sachs was a German botanist and the author of Geschichte der Botanik, a History of Botany in 1875, which became a highly regarded historical chronicle from the mid-1500s through to the mid-1800s. The book was about the various branches of botanical science, where he published his nutrient solution formula for water culture” and revived the use of this technique as the standard tool when researching plant nutritional needs. His plant nutrient formula, with only minor changes, was almost universally used for the next eight decades.
Sachs’ experiments blazed the trail, and in rapid succession, other scientists followed up his work, the most notable of which was A German agricultural chemist Johann August Ludwig Wilhelm Knop.