Frits Warmolt Went

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Frits Warmolt Went (May 18, 1903, Utrecht - May 1, 1990, Little Valley, Nevada) was a Dutch biologist whose 1928 experiment demonstrated the existence of auxin in plants.

Went's father was the prominent Dutch botanist F.A.F.C. Went. Upon graduating and producing his classic auxin paper as his thesis, the younger Went experimented in Java (Dutch East Indies) from 1927 to 1933, then to Caltech in Pasadena, California, first researching plant hormones. His interest gradually shifted to the environment influences on plant growth.

Funded by generous donors, Went constructed a series of greenhouses at Caltech in which he could vary light conditions, humidity, temperature, air quality and other variables. In 1949 this led to him to construct a large new complex of climate-controlled rooms called the Earhart Plant Research Laboratory, also known as the "phytotron". Here he produced foundational research of the effects of air pollution on plant growth.

Went left Caltech in 1958 to become the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, and commissioned the Climatron, a larger-scale and more high-tech version of the Caltech greenhouses. In 1965 he founded the Laboratory of Desert Biology in Reno, Nevada, and remained active in many fields of botany until his death in 1990.