Mikhail Semyonovich Tsvet, also spelt Tsvett, Tswett, Tswet, Zwet, and Cvet (Russian: Михаил Семёнович Цвет; 14 May 1872 – 26 June 1919) was a Russian-Italian botanist who invented chromatography.

He used liquid-adsorption column chromatography with calcium carbonate as adsorbent and petrol ether/ethanol mixtures as eluent to separate chlorophylls and carotenoids.

[1] He first used the term "chromatography" in print in 1906 in his two papers about chlorophyll in the German botanical journal, Berichte der Deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft.

Richard Willstätter and Arthur Stoll tried to repeat Tsvet's experiments, but because they used an overly aggressive adsorbent (destroying the chlorophyll), were not able to do so.

It was revived 10 years after his death thanks to Austrian biochemist Richard Kuhn and his student, German scientist Edgar Lederer[6][7][8][9] as well as the work of A. J. Martin and R. L.