A Century of Separation Science

A Century of Separation Science
Haleem J. Issaq

A Century of Separation Science presents an extensive overview of the critical developments in separation science since 1900, covering recent advances in chromatography, electrophoresis, field-flow fractionation, countercurrent chromatography, and supercritical fluid chromatography for high-speed and high-throughput analysis.

This book records some of the advances that took place in the twentieth century, enabling the reader to trace separation science from its earliest development to its emergence as a leader in science research today. I asked each contributor to write his or her section so that it would be easy and enjoyable reading and not a dry statement of scientific events. As a result, the reader has in hand a volume that discusses different aspects of separation science

Table of Contents
A Century of Separation Science presents an extensive overview of the critical developments in separation science since 1900, covering recent advances in chromatography, electrophoresis, field-flow fractionation, countercurrent chromatography, and supercritical fluid chromatography for high-speed and high-throughput analysis.
Chromatography – the separation technique of the 20th century; Mikhail Semenovich Tswett – the father of modern chromatography; from crushed bricks to microchips; thin layer chromatography; from thin layer chromatography to high performance thin layer chromatography to planar chromatography; the way it was; gas chromatography – a personal retrospective; the evolution of capillary column gas chromatography – a historical overview; forty years of gas chromatography; liquid crystals stationary phases in gas chromatography – a historical prospective; quantitative retention-eluent composition relationships in partition and adsorption chromatography; hollow sticks with mud inside – the technology of HPLC columns; on the way to a general theory of gradient elution; solvent selection for optimal separation in liquid chromatography; my life in separation sciences – study of separation mechanisms.

Since its introduction by Tswett in 1901 as column chromatography for the separation of plant pigments, separation science has developed many diversified branches, each of which has its advantages, limitations, and fields of application. This book explores many aspects of separation science. For example, Dr. Leslie Ettre discusses the development of chromatography in the twentieth century, a period that witnessed the emergence, development, and dominance of separation science as an analytical technique. Today, chromatography and electrophoresis are ‘‘must’’ techniques in the analytical laboratory, a topic further explored in Professor Johan Roeraade’s chapter, ‘‘From Crushed Bricks to Microchips,’’ which delineates the major developments in separation science.

As we examine the advances of separation science in the 1900s, we realize that at the beginning of the twentieth century, the emphasis was on separating milligram quantities in minutes—researchers used either glass columns packed with large particle materials or paper chromatography. Detection was done by observing color bands, and quantitation methods were crude at best. As the century progressed, so did development of many separation techniques in addition to column and paper chromatography: thin layer chromatography, slab gel electrophoresis, gas chromatography, ion chromatography, supercritical fluid chromatography, field flow fractionation, countercurrent chromatography, solid phase extraction, affinity chromatography, and capillary electrophoresis. We also simultaneously witnessed the development of microchip technology for fast separations in milliseconds and the emergence of array capillary and microchip electrophoresis for the analysis of multisamples. By the end of the century, we were able to resolve nanogram quantities, in seconds on millimeter internal diameter (i.d.) columns packed with μm particles, or nanochannels (microchips), using sophisticated equipment with accurate detection instrumentation. So, the trend throughout the twentieth century focused on high throughput, increased efficiency, smaller sample size, less waste, high resolution, and more sensitive detection methods.

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