Life and research results of Pavel Šiffel, a talented but untimely deceased Czech scientist in photosynthesis, are reviewed. He studied biophysics and physiology of chlorophyll, its complexes with proteins, their absorption and fluorescence spectra, activities in mutants and transformants, dealt with chlorophyll biosynthesis and protochlorophyllide photoreduction, pigments in plants grown at CO 2 deficiency and under simulated acid rain, with changes accompanying leaf and plant development, photobleaching, etc. He participated in construction of specialised spectrofluorometers, finally he built the kinetic spectrophotometer SpeKin.Additional key words: absorption and excitation fluorescence spectra; chlorophyll biosynthesis; chlorophyll-protein complexes; CO 2 deficiency; kinetic spectrophotometer; leaf age; mutants and transformants; photobleaching; photosystem 2; simulated acid rain.