Historical development of chromatography

HPLC is but one of several chromatographic techniques. Having looked at the role of chromatographic techniques in analysis in order to appreciate their importance, it now remains to look at how HPLC emerged as a logical progression out of the historical development of chromatography. 

There are a number of examples of work carried out prior to the twentieth century in which experiments were conducted which are recognisable in retrospect as early forms of chromatography. However, it was the work 

By the mid-1960s the majority of the gas chromatography methods and equipment still in use had been described in principle. Also the limitations of the technique had become clear. Returning to the theme of economic necessity driving analytical science, there was a need, particularly in the increasingly important pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries, for chromatographic techniques by which involatile and thermally unstable compounds could be analysed without the need for chemical derivatisa-tion. 

With developments in technology it was possible to apply chromatographic theory to the development of column liquid chromatography and 

The end result of these developments and consequently the rationale behind them is covered in subsequent chapters in this book. 

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This is only a small glimpse of the historical development of chromatography it is a fascinating story, and more complete accounts have been published by Ettre.10... 

Figure 4.17. Diagrams depicting the historical development of chromatography data handling systems.

At present chromatography is a separate well developed field of knowledge derived from adsorption [99] and one of the most important analytical methods [100-102]. It is commonly applied for industrial separation of complex mixtures [103-105]. The historical development of chromatography is presented in the book [106] that describes some important milestones of its theory and practice and the scientists who deserve thanks for developing this technique. 

The brief historical development in the last chapter noted that the early theoretical papers described chromatography in terms similar to distillation or extraction and were known as the plate theory. Useful as it may have been in the development of chromatography, the plate theory is of little value in modern chromatography and has been replaced by the rate theory. Any of the early books on gas chromatography can be consulted for a discussion of the plate theory, and Giddings1 has written a good historical summary of the concurrent development of the plate and rate theories. 

Stahl, E. The historical development of the method. In Thin layer Chromatography (E. Stahl, Ed.) pp. 1-6, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1969. 

Milestones in the development of Chromatography are linked to the work of many outstanding scientists, such as Ramsay, Langmuir, Berl and Schmidt, Kuhn, Martin and Synge, Cremer and others. It would expand the scope of this contribution to highlight the historical merits of these scientists and the reader is referred to special references (Wintermeier, s. Unger, 1990 and Ettre, 1996). 

The history of chromatography and adsorption chromatography, from its earliest pre-Christian antecedents to its explicit discovery by Tswett and its subsequent development by more recent workers, has been covered in great detail by other writers [e.g.. Refs. 1-4) for reasonably complete coverage]. These historical reviews emphasize the experimental side of adsorption chromatography almost to the exclusion of theoretical contributions, because advances in the method have been for the most part advances in technique. In the present brief section we will attempt to focus attention on the historical development of an understanding of the adsorption chromatographic process. 

Historically, developments in chromatography led to a marked growth in research on polysaccharides and carbohydrate-containing biopolymers, which commonly entailed glycol-cleavage oxidation. With time, NMR spectroscopy and mass spectroscopy have acquired complementary roles of ever-increasing importance in studies on molecular structure. 

Several column types have been used to separate nucleic acids. A discussion of the historical development of DNA and RNA chromatography is followed by a brief description of the column development that has led to the modern use of ion-pairing chromatography. 

Although the interest in, and application of layer chromatography has historically resulted from the development of PC, it was soon replaced by thin-layer chromatography (TLC). In PC, only one stationary phase matrix is available (cellulose), at variance to TLC (silica, polyamide, ion-exchange resins, cellulose). Using a silica-gel plate, separation of a sample can be accomplished in approximately 1 h as compared with many hours on paper. The plate size is much smaller than the necessary paper size. Also, more samples can be spotted... 

Overview of historical developments in gas chromatography Date Event... 

These modes of chromatography will be discussed in detail, with the exception of paper chromatography, which has now largely been replaced by column chromatography and which therefore is of interest in sugar analysis only from a historical point of view. Table 4 summarizes the main developments in this field, including some recent contributions (26). 

The development of displacement separations has historically been an empirical process and even though chromatographic theory may guide the selection of operating conditions the final stage must involve experimental validation. Typically, several experiments will be carried out at or near the conditions determined by the theory. The final stage in the procedure is either experimental or numerical optimization of the displacement process to produce optimal yields, purities and productivities. At this point, the relative efficacy of selective and conventional displacement chromatography can also be evaluated. 

This brief historical overview of RPLC development is far from the full description of all signihcant achievements made in the past however, the primary goal is to show the path of the development, which was, to a larger extent, in the tail of GC development. Consequently, the models and the descriptions of the retention mechanism were essentially transferred from gas-liquid partition chromatography. 

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