Csaba Horváth (25 January 1930 – 13 April 2004) was a Hungarian-American chemical engineer, particularly noted for building the first high-performance liquid chromatograph.

[1][2][3] Csaba Horváth was born in Szolnok, Hungary and graduated in chemical engineering from the Budapest Institute of Technology.

The award is sponsored by HPLC, Inc. Having worked in industry in the pilot plant of Farbwerke Hoechst AG and then on the surface chemistry of organic pigments, he studied for a PhD at Goethe University in gas-liquid chromatography, a method of separating volatile materials for chemical analysis.

Thus was created high performance liquid chromatography or HPLC, a technique which became a major field of study (and in which he remained a leading figure), and continued to publish till shortly before his death.

As HPLC and RPLC became the preeminent techniques associated with biochemical analysis, many have suggested that Csaba Horvath inexplicably missed inclusion in the ranks of Nobel laureates.