Scaling new peaks

Early in her academic career in the US, chromatographer Apryll Stalcup would visit primary schools to talk to them about her work. ‘During one visit, the class mouse had been kidnapped and the kidnapper had left a ransom note,’ she recalls. ‘The vice principal, who is everybody's favourite villain in the US, came in and the kids took his pen. They analysed the ink from his pen, compared it to the ink the ransom note was written with, and found it was the same type of pen. So they were able to get the class mouse back.’

Most of us were introduced to chromatography in a similar way as young children, and have vivid memories of watching colourful streaks of ink travelling upwards on a piece of blotting paper propped up in a glass of water. But as memorable as this early experiment is, many pupils leave education without grasping how widely-used this fundamentally simple technique is in the real world.

From its uses in law enforcement to pharmaceuticals and environmental sciences, Nina Notman admires the plethora of different uses for the separation techniques known collectively as chromatography.