A. J. P. MARTIN AND A. T. JAMES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY STANFORD MOORE* The following is a Condensation of the introductory remarks given at the meeting of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists, New York City, May loth, 1957. Your Award Committee has chosen to honour to-day two scholars who have made a brilliant contribution to chemistry. The method of gas-liquid chromatography which A. J.P. Martin and A. T. James have introduced has increased the tempo of research and practice in a whole area of analytical chemistry. And they have done this by a combination of talents--of ingenuity plus practical know-how--which can be an inspiration to all of us--certainly it has been to me. A. J.P. Martin is a born experimenter. I have heard that as a boy of eight he was already experimenting in his basement with distillation appara- tus. From then on he has had a great love for making things mechanical, •.• .-....• :....-.. .. -:-•.:.. :.. •.:• ........ : ::•.:• .. .•. •: "'•'. :r• -'2. : •.. :: . • '-.. •r • •-•-• '• - -- .•.:•:..v .. •..:z*' .'% ,-:•:•.:•.': • , •.: %... :. .... ß . •. -.•.•r '::'*' •: .... ::-: : [:•.• .-)- .): ' 7'"'"'...• :-.. 5.: -'• --.• ..:•.. • • : -.[' ........ •.½..•%.• - ..:•.. . .:% ,• ......- ß .,,.....:: -..22 .: '•.•:."' ..' . . '-•" • .-- :• •..- .•:...:r • ..... .•.• .: •'• --•}• - .. •.....• ß '•Z"7 • '?':•.. : • .'.:i• • :'",•' . .' .•-.Y• Dr. Archer John Porter Martin--Nobel Laureate in chemistry and winner of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists Special Award for outstanding scientific literature. Dr. Martin and his co-author, Dr. A. T. James, are being honoured for their publications on gas chromatography. * The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York City. 27O

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY 271 both at home and in the laboratory. He went to school in London, and thence to the University of Cambridge for both his baccalaureate and Ph.D. degrees. Somewhere during this period his natural bent for mathematics and physical chemistry developed. He majored in biochemistry, and he is also an expert and imaginative theoriser. In fact, one of the remarkable things about Martin is that he is so gifted in thinking in theoretical terms and at the same time he is so skilful in the shop and the laboratory. In summarising the research which has led to the award to-day, and in turning to the career of A. T. James, I need to take you back briefly before the year 1949, when the collaboration of James and Martin began, and speak of the campus of the University of Cambridge in the late 1930's. At that time two graduate students on the campus happened to pool their resources to solve a common problem. A. J. P. Martin and R. L. M. Synge joined efforts on a project concerned with the separation of acetyl-amino acids by liquid-liquid extraction. After graduation, they both went together to take their first jobs with the British Wool Industries Research Laboratory in Leeds, and continued their collaboration 'there. In the course of several very fruitful years they hit upon the idea of carrying out liquid-liquid extraction using a gel to support one of the phases. They thus introduced chromato- graphic columns in which fractionation could be achieved by virtue of the different distribution coefficients of solutes between a mobile phase and a stationary liquid or gel-lik'e phase. When the support for the stationary phase was cellulose in the form of sheets of paper, the ingenious method of paper chromatography was born, and I think that you all know that within a few years the method of paper chromatography described by Consden, Gordon and Martin became the most widely used separation technique in biochemistry. Adsorption chromatography had been widely used before for the separation of pigments and sterois, but Martin and Synge's concept of liquid-liquid chromatography rendered the chromato- graphic technique available for the separation of a host of water-soluble amino-acids, sugars, lower fatty acids, antibiotics, and other compounds of partidular interest in biochemistry and medicine. Within remarkably few years the technique received the recognition which it well deserved when Martin and Synge were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1952. But there was more to come. In Martin and Synge's initial papers in about 1940 they suggested that, in addition to using two liquid phases, a chromatogram could be operated with a gas phase and a liquid phase, and that this arrangement would have ad•vantages for the separation of volatile compounds. In the meantime, there were changes in jobs and interests, and this aspect of the subject did not receive attention immediately. Martin moved from Leeds to a position with the Boots Pure Drug Co., and Synge to the i.ister Institute in London. Martin then moved to the Lister at about the