In 1903 the Russian botanist Mikhail Tsvet found a new way to separate plant pigments. Each separated pigment was a different color. Tsvet named his technique chromatography, a word he derived from the Greek words for color (chroma) and writing (graphe).
Tsvet’s chromatography was widely used for decades. In the 1940’s two scientists named Archer John Porter Martin and Richard Lawrence Millington Synge developed a new approach to chromatography. This development used two liquid phases instead of one. This enables them to separate compounds with different partition coefficients and was the beginning of the development of high-pressure liquid chromatography.
In the 1970’s the technique was refined, and pumps were developed to help push the liquid phase and compounds through the stationary phase. Therefore, the compounds could pass thorough and be separated quickly. The technique was called high pressure liquid chromatography.
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