Archer Martin
British chemist (1910–2002)
Archer John Porter Martin (1 March 1910 – 28 July 2002) was an English chemist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of partition chromatography with Richard Synge.
Early life
Martin's father was a GP. Martin was educated at Bedford School, and Peterhouse, Cambridge.
Career
Working first in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory, he moved to the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory, and in 1938 moved to Wool Industries Research Institution in Leeds. He was head of the biochemistry division of Boots Pure Drug Company from 1946 to 1948, when he joined the Medical Research Council. There, he was appointed head of the physical chemistry division of the National Institute for Medical Research in 1952, and was chemical consultant from 1956 to 1959.
He specialised in biochemistry, in some aspects of vitamins E and B2, and in techniques that laid the foundation for several new types of chromatography. He developed partition chromatography whilst working on the separation of amino acids, and later developed gas-liquid chromatography with Anthony T. James. Amongst many honours, he received his Nobel Prize in 1952.
After his retirement from the University of Sussex, he was visiting professor at both the University of Houston in Texas and the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland.
He published far fewer papers than the typical Nobel winners—only 70 in all—but his ninth paper contained the work that would eventually win him the Nobel Prize.
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This entry incorporates text from “Archer Martin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.