One of the odder ‘jewish invention’ claims that I have encountered is the assertion that jews ‘invented hydroponics’. (1) Hydroponics is in laymen’s terms is when you grow plants in a medium other than soil; usually a nutrient-rich solution.
Now I think I know where this claim comes from since James Sholto Douglas narrates the following at the beginning of his widely-republished work on hydroponics:
‘By 1842 a list of nine elements believed to be essential to plant growth had been made out, and the discoveries of the German workers, Sachs and Knop, in the years 1859-65, resulted in a development of the technique of soulless cultivation. The addition of chemicals to water was found to produce a nutrient solution that would support plant life, so that by 1920 the laboratory preparation of water cultures had been standardized and the methods for their use were well established.’ (2)
Now the Sachs and Knop mentioned by Sholto Douglas are Julius von Sachs and Wilhelm Knop; now Knop was obviously German, but Julius von Sachs was German but is easily confused for the similarly named Julius Sachs; who was jewish and a scion of the Goldman-Sachs banking family who was a contemporary of Julius von Sachs. (4)
So, what I think has occurred here is that someone has (probably innocently) confused Julius von Sachs – a major figure in the history of hydroponics who was German and not jewish – with Julius Sachs who was a jewish teacher from a major banking family in the United States.
Now for the record the person who ‘invented’ hydroponics – or at least the first mention of it that we have – was Sir Francis Bacon who mentions the concept in his posthumous 1627 book ‘Sylva Sylvarum’ (5) while the first successful experiments we know of were conducted by the English polymath John Woodward and the results published in 1699. (6)
From then the history of hydroponics moves to von Sachs and Knop; (7) who – as we have seen – were not jewish at all but rather German.
So no jews did not invent hydroponics!
References
(1) https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/18q24ls/what_are_some_things_that_were_invented_by_jews/
(2) James Sholto Douglas, 1975, ‘Hydroponics: The Bengal System with Notes on Other Methods of Soilless Cultivation’, 5th Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, pp. 2-3
(3) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Sachs,_Julius_von
(4) https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/02/03/95472290.html?pageNumber=13
(5) https://www.futuregarden.co.uk/expert-advice/history-hydroponics/
(6) Sholto Douglas, Op. Cit., p. 2
(7) Ibid.
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