Discovery
The technique was invented by Grant Henry Lathe and Colin R Ruthven, working at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, London. They later received the John Scott Award for this invention. While Lathe and Ruthven used starch gels as the matrix, Jerker Porath and Per Flodin later introduced dextran gels; other gels with size fractionation properties include agarose and polyacrylamide. A short review of these developments has appeared.
There were also attempts to fractionate synthetic high polymers; however, it was not until 1964, when J. C. Moore of the Dow Chemical Company published his work on the preparation of gel permeation chromatography (GPC) columns based on cross-linked polystyrene with controlled pore size, that a rapid increase of research activity in this field began. It was recognized almost immediately that with proper calibration, GPC was capable to provide molar mass and molar mass distribution information for synthetic polymers. Because the latter information was difficult to obtain by other methods, GPC came rapidly into extensive use.
Read more about this topic: Size-exclusion Chromatography
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pays itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)