After a brief background on Otto Heinrich Warburg (1883–1970), and some of his selected research, we provide highlights, in English, of three of his papers in the 1940s—unknown to many as they were not originally published in English. They are: two brief reports on Photosynthesis, with Wilhelm Lüttgens, originally published in German, in 1944: ‘Experiment on assimilation of carbonic acid’; and ‘Further experiments on carbon dioxide assimilation’. This is followed by a regular paper, originally published in Russian, in 1946: ‘The photochemical reduction of quinone in green granules’. Since the 1944 reports discussed here are very short, their translations are included in the Appendix, but that of the 1946 paper is provided in the Supplementary Material. In all three reports, Warburg provides the first evidence for and elaborates on light-driven water oxidation coupled to reduction of added benzoquinone. These largely overlooked studies of Warburg are in stark contrast to Warburg’s well-known error in assigning the origin of the photosynthetically formed dioxygen to carbonate.

在简要介绍奥托·海因里希·瓦尔堡 (Otto Heinrich Warburg，1883-1970) 以及他的一些选定研究之后，我们以英文提供了他在 1940 年代的三篇论文的重点——许多人不知道这些论文最初并非以英文发表。它们是： 两份关于光合作用的简短报告，与 Wilhelm Lüttgens 合着，最初于 1944 年以德文出版：“碳酸同化实验”；和“关于二氧化碳同化的进一步实验”。随后是 1946 年最初以俄语出版的常规论文：“绿色颗粒中醌的光化学还原”。由于此处讨论的 1944 年报告很短，因此它们的译文包含在附录中，但 1946 年论文的译文在补充材料中提供。在所有三份报告中，Warburg 提供了第一个证据并详细阐述了光驱动的水氧化与添加的苯醌的还原相结合。这些在很大程度上被忽视的 Warburg 研究与 Warburg 在将光合作用形成的分子氧的起源归因于碳酸盐方面的众所周知的错误形成鲜明对比。