alt Hacker NewsFrom the second paragraph in the article:
>In 1875, Charles Darwin posited that some species from the genus Saxifraga—a group of flowering plants typically found in alpine environments—may be carnivorous because of their sticky glandular hairs, which can trap insects. However, there has been a lack of conclusive evidence to support this hypothesis.
Can you clarify how you got "But Darwin, if I understand correctly, classified the plant as carnivorous" out of that? Because it sounds like Darwin observed that there existed this feature on the plants that appeared adapted to carnivorous behavior, but didn't actually observe it in action (and of course he didn't have isotopic tracking to provide hard proof of molecular absorption either). So it was a hypothesis based on feature observation, and now someone has gotten around to proving that as fact via experiment. Not something radically new in terms of technique sure, could have been proved long ago in principle (this sort of tracking was core to what settled the original DNA/protein genetics debates), but still fun to read about and nice to see more getting learned about the species in our world.
Something else to think about, if some potentiating invention would have taken place a few decades earlier, it would have been quite likely that by 1875 there would have been effective isotope analyses available.
Also the further back you go into the 19th century, the more likely it is that the potentiating invention would be completely unrelated to nuclear chemistry.
Regardless, that same potentiating invention (whatever it is) is surely responsible by now for a whole lot more things other than nuclear science.