History of gas chromatography

Modern gas chromatography (GC) was invented by Martin and James in 1952 [1], and has become one of the most important and widely applied analytical techniques in modern chemistry. Major milestones in the development of GC, especially in column technology, detection and sample introduction are described in this historical review. Many trends in current progress can be seen to originate in the first two decades of the history of GC, but the invention of fused-silica capillary columns greatly increased the application of high-resolution GC across the field of organic analysis; the development of low-cost, bench-top mass spectrometers led to further advances. Progress continues to be rapid in comprehensive 2D GC, fast analysis, detection by atomic emission and time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and in applications to process analysis. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.