Csaba Horváth – Scholar, Scientist, Mentor, Friend

Abstract

At Farbwerke Hoechst, Csaba did research and development work on the surface chemistry of organic pigment dyes and learned about the practical aspects of surface chemistry. During his doctoral research, Csaba invented and developed porous-layer open tubular columns which offers remarkable advantages over wall-coated OTC, e.g., a higher loadability and the ability to use all retention mechanisms afforded by adsorption. He also prepared surface-treated beads, an approach that he used later in the context of HPLC. Working with S.R. Lipsky on the development of analytical methodologies for lunar samples, searching for trace compounds which could show the presence of life on the moon in a distant past, he imagined applying to LC the same principles that he had used earlier in GC, and built the first instrument for high pressure liquid chromatography. Very early, he understood the potential of this new separation method to revolutionize biochemistry and molecular biology. Working for Picker-Nuclear, Csaba developed the first commercial instrument for HPLC, which was also the first instrument to use microbore HPLC columns (for ion-exchange separations of biological compounds). From the beginning, Csaba focused his interests on the separation of samples of biological origin, becoming the pioneer of modern bioanalytical chemistry. Hemore » devoted considerable attention to the development of the theory and applications of reversed-phase liquid chromatography, the most widely applied chromatographic method of analysis, pioneered the use of displacement chromatography for preparative HPLC, and innumerable applications of HPLC to the separation of samples of biological origin. He developed the solvophobic theory of retention in RPLC, the use of entropy-enthalpy compensation in the study of retention mechanisms, and the fundamentals of electrochromatography. The importance of his spearheading HPLC, RPLC, and their applications in the life sciences, fields in which these new methods are leading to countless breakthroughs, is such that his contributions will remain among the major scientific achievemetns of the 20th century.« less