Date of Award

6-1952

Degree Type

Bachelors Essay

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

John G. Surak

Abstract

"No other discovery has exerted as great an influence and widened the .field of investigation of the organic chemist as much as Tswett's discovery. or Chromatographic Adsorption Analysis 1n 1906".

In 1910 Tswett's comprehensive work "Chromophylls in the Plant and Animal World" was published. Tswett's fundamental experiments consisted or extracting the color from dried leaves with petroleum ether. He poured the extract through a compressed column or finely powdered calcium carbonate. The column was attached to a filter flask and the solution drawn through. He found that the apparently homogeneous pigment separated into colored bands along the column as the extract percolated through the column. A pale yellow ring appeared at the top, two green bands beneath it, and, near the bottom three separate yellow bands appeared. Then he pushed the column of calcium carbonate (or the chromatogram) out of its glass enclosure. With a knife he separated what nature had wielded into one. He also found that once the chromatogram was developed he could pour more petroleum ether over the column and the bands would move downward. In this way he was able to collect the individual bands as they percolated through the column.

Comments

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Liberal Arts of Marquette University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Bachelor of Science

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