Tuesday, March 5, 2013

History of Chromatography

Mikhail Tswett, Russian, 1872-1919 Botanist.
In 1907 Tswett used chromatography to separate plant pigments. He called the new technique chromatography because the result of the analysis was 'written in color' along the length of the adsorbent column.
Chroma means "color" and graphein means to "write". Chromatography is the process of separation of different dissloved components of a mixture by their adsorption over an appropriate adosrbent material.
The name chromatography owes its origin to the fact that the technique was first used for the separation of colored substances from plants (Greek, chormes, meaning color). However, these days it can be applied to colorless substances.

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