William F. Gericke is credited as the father of modern hydroponics. He was born on a Nebraska farm on 30 August 1882, was educated at Ohio State, Johns Hopkins and California, and became a professor and plant physiologist at UC Berkeley.
Where the word hydroponics came from
Building on the work of many before him, Gericke brought it all together in 1929 and coined the name "hydroponics". He grew his plants in sawdust and combined all the key nutrients plants need. His enormous plants earned the media attention that took hydroponics to the masses.
The name comes from two Greek words: "hydros" for water and "ponos" for work, so hydroponics means "water working". He originally called it aquaponics but changed the name to avoid confusion with an existing term.
His wife, Grace, described his life's work as solving world food problems in the most efficient, productive and economical way, helping humanity find a way to feed itself.
In his 1940 book "The Complete Guide to Soilless Culture", Gericke wrote that "the fuel of the future, after our stocks of coal and oil have been depleted, may well be made from carbohydrates produced by the hydroponic method." When journalists asked whether he expected to make a lot of money from hydroponics, he just smiled.
Growing without soil has a long history
William was not the first to grow plants in water. People have used various forms of it for thousands of years.
The famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon were rumoured to have used hydroponics to achieve their lush growth, although modern historians doubt that. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics from several hundred years BC show plants grown along the Nile without soil, as do the floating gardens of China described by Marco Polo in his journal.
The Aztec chinampas were also a form of hydroponics: floating rafts of reeds loaded with sediment from the lake bottom. Plant roots grew through the reeds, giving a constant water source and root oxygenation. Some chinampas were up to 60 metres long.
