Partition chromatography theory and practice was introduced through the work and publications of Archer Martin and Richard Laurence Millington Synge during the 1940s.
[4] Martin and Synge initially attempted to devise a method of performing a sequential liquid-liquid extraction with serially connected glass vessels that functioned as separatory funnels.
[1] The seminal article presenting their early studies described a rather complicated instrument that allowed partitioning of amino acids between water and chloroform phases.
"[8] The article describes both the theory in terms of the partition coefficient of a compound, and the application of the process to the separation of amino acids on a water-impregnated silica column eluted with a water:chloroform:n-butanol solvent mixture.
[13] Finally, gas-liquid chromatography, a fundamental technique in modern analytical chemistry, was described by Martin with coauthors A. T. James and G. Howard Smith in 1952.