The word chromatography was used for the first time in
1906 by a Russian botanist, Mikhail Tswett, who described
it as a new technique to separate the components of complex
mixtures [1, 2]. His work was published in the Proceedings
of the German Botanical Society; there he described a
technique based on the partition of solutes between a
stationary solid adsorbent and a moving liquid phase. The
experiment consisted in pouring a small quantity of the
solution of pigments, such as green leaf pigments, on the
top of a vertical column of absorbent, followed by a flow of
pure solvent, whereupon a series of colored bands formed
Handbook of Polymer Synthesis, Characterization, and Processing, First Edition. Edited by Enrique Sald´ıvar-Guerra and Eduardo Vivaldo-Lima.
© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.