1.1. Introduction[2]

1.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The Russian botanist M. S. Tswett used a column of powdered calcium carbonate to separate green leaf pigments into a series of colored bands by allowing a solvent to percolate through the column bed.

The name chromatography came from= (color writing) from the Greek for color (chroma) and write (graphein) to describe the process.

In the early 1930s the method of M. S. Tswett became an established laboratory method. . A. J. P. Martin received the Nobel prize in 1952 for the invention of partition chromatography

(with R. L. M. Synge) and in the same year with A. T. James he introduced the

technique of gas-liquid chromatography. The introduction and development of

gas-liquid chromatography in the 1950s represented a significant milestone, ushering

in the era of instrumental methods of separation which spawned the many variations

of modern chromatography in use today. Further milestones in the evolution of

chromatographic separation methods are summarized in Table 1.