How the Robinsons nearly invented partition chromatography in 1934

• Published in: Notes and records of the Royal Society of London 1992-07, Vol.46 (2), p.309-311
• Main Author: Synge, Richard Laurence Millington
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biochemistry; Chromatography; Corridors; Pigments; Reminiscences and Discoveries; Solvents; Wound dressings
• ISSN: 0035-9149; 1743-0178
• DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.1992.0029

There is a substantial gap in Trevor I. Williams’s fascinating book Robert Robinson: chemist extraordinary.1 This is not mentioned by S.F. Mason in his recent review2, nor is the topic satisfactorily handled in the earlier Robinsonian sources that Mason cites. It is the long-continued collaborative research of Robert and Gertrude Maud Robinson with members of the staff of the John Innes Horticultural Institution on the chemical genetics of plant-petal pigments. Fortunately, this work has already been beautifully recalled in Notes and Records in a paper by the late Rose Scott-Moncrieff entitled ‘The classical period in chemical genetics’3. J.B.S. Haldane (at the time of the work part-time Consultant to the Institution) wrote in 1937: ‘As I regard her [Miss Scott-Moncrieff’s] work as a model for future researches, and suspect that my initiation of it may have been my most important contribution to biochemistry, I will deal with it in some detail.’4 Many of us still support this self-appraisal by Haldane. Later, and also characteristically, he wrote: ‘At an early stage in her work Scott-Moncrieff5 needed great tact to collaborate simultaneously with Sir Robert Robinson and myself.’6