Early History of Chromatography

Abstract

Our letter on the history of chromatography¹ has been commented on inter alia by Zechmeister², who directs attention to one of his papers³ not cited in our letter and claims that in this he has done justice to Day, whom we have described as the true discoverer of chromatography. Here, however, as in the later publication⁴ which we did quote, he again names Tswett as “the true inventor of chromatography in all of its important aspects”. Even in this earlier publication³, however, Zechmeister does not quote the really important paper describing Day's work in detail⁵, and referred to by us in our previous letter and elsewhere^1,6, nor does he pass any comment on it in his letter²; nor, again, does he comment upon the paper by Engler and Albrecht⁷ to which we referred. Both these papers are, however, of the utmost importance. Moreover, our own further literary researches indicate that the manifold roots of chromatography must, accepting Zechmeister's own definition of chromatography⁴, be sought even earlier than we had supposed. It is important to notice that his definition does not include the process of development, which appears to have been Tswett's only new contribution.