A Brief History of Molecular Photosynthesis: The Quest for the Bridge Between Light and Chemistry

This chapter describes a brief historical overview of the artificial photosynthesis research field from a molecular point of view. The present text is by no means a review of the field, but rather a short account with illustrative examples of what are, in our opinion, key advances in our molecular understanding of the photosynthetic process. We adopt a top-down strategy, in which the general lines of the natural photosynthetic process are described through a review of the early findings, followed by a gradual zoom in into the photo-redox enzymes to discuss the awesome molecular machinery behind the solar-to-biofuel production. A parallel between the molecular structure/function relationships of natural photosynthesis and those in artificial models is presented to illustrate the historical evolution of modern artificial photosynthesis research. The text contemplates biomimetic models that have been designed to understand critical steps in natural photosynthesis, but also describes the main features of whole man-made photosynthetic systems, which are the ultimate fruits of more than 50 years of molecular artificial photosynthesis research.