It is not widely known that the Nobel-prizewinning atomic physicist James Franck (see '50 Years Ago' Nature 512, 381; 2014) spent 30 years investigating photosynthesis (see J. L. Rosenberg Photosynth. Res. 80, 71–76; 2004).

Dining at the University of Chicago's Quadrangle Club, Franck met the distinguished scientist and Biochemistry textbook author Lubert Stryer, then a student and part-time waiter. Stryer told me that Franck chatted to him about his research into how plants convert visible light into chemical energy, adding that it might be useful to Stryer one day.

Later, Stryer took advantage of Franck's unfinished work to investigate other photochemical reactions, notably going on to elucidate the function of the G protein that transduces the light signal in visual excitation (see L. Stryer J. Biol. Chem. 287, 15164–15173; 2012).