Marcel Golay & Leslie Ettre Awards

The Marcel Golay award was instituted in honor of Marcel Jules Eduard Golay, the inventor of capillary columns. Dr. Golay, one of the pioneers of gas chromatography, introduced the theory of dispersion in open tubular columns (capillary columns) and demonstrated their efficacy at the second International Symposium on Gas Chromatography in 1958. Dr. Golay joined PerkinElmer in 1962 as a senior scientist, and invented the Golay infrared sensor, which, at the time was the most sensitive infrared sensor available. Golay's invention helped establish PerkinElmer as a major source of infrared technology. He also extended the theory of preparative columns and examined the properties of various chromatography sampling systems. The open tubular gas chromatography column is the most popular analytical gas chromatography column in use today. Dr. Golay worked as was a senior scientist at PerkinElmer up until his death in 1989.

The 2009 Marcel Golay Award was presented to Professor Barry L. Karger of Northeastern University for his work in narrow diameter liquid chromatography (LC). The Golay Award was presented to Mr. Karger for a lifetime of achievement in capillary chromatography including 315 reviewed publications and 39 patents. Mr. Karger is the director of the Barnett Institute and professor of Analytical Chemistry at Northeastern University. Most recently, he broke new ground by using 10m inside diameter (ID) porous layer open tubular (PLOT) columns to analyze samples with less than 10,000 cells. Compared to the traditional 75 mm (µm) ID column, the PLOT platform delivers high sensitivity using less than one-fifth of the sample amount. The small sample requirement enables multiple injections into the column for increased protein identification.

The Leslie Ettre Award was established in honor of Leslie S. Ettre who worked at PerkinElmer for 32 years and made major contributions to gas chromatography (GC) including writing and editing over 40 books and almost 400 articles and papers. The award was presented at the International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography to a scientist 35 years old or younger presenting the most interesting original research in capillary gas chromatography with an emphasis on environmental and food safety.

The 2009 Leslie Ettre Award was presented to W. Christopher Siegler of the University of Washington for his work in three-dimensional gas chromatography (GC). Mr. Siegler, a graduate student at the University of Washington, is the second winner of the award. While two-dimensional GC separations have become common, Mr. Siegler's award-winning paper focused on the addition of a third dimension to separate overlapped analytes. The instrument developed by Mr. Siegler and other University of Washington researchers, is simple and requires only minor modifications to a conventional 1D gas chromatograph. It provides unique chemical selectivity by utilizing 3 columns with different chemical selectivity to better distinguish analytes from complex samples.

We extend our congratulations to Professor Karger and Mr. Siegler on their achievements in gas chromatography.