Editing Gas chromatography (section)

===Gas adsorption chromatography precursors===
German physical chemist [[Erika Cremer]] in 1947 together with Austrian graduate student Fritz Prior developed what could be considered the first gas chromatograph that consisted of a carrier gas, a column packed with silica gel, and a thermal conductivity detector. They exhibited the chromatograph at ACHEMA in Frankfurt, but nobody was interested in it.<ref name="Ettre">{{cite book |last1=Ettre |first1=Leslie S. |title=Chapters in the evolution of chromatography |date=2008 |publisher=Imperial College Press |location=London |isbn=978-1860949432}}</ref>
N.C. Turner with the Burrell Corporation introduced in 1943 a massive instrument that used a charcoal column and mercury vapors. Stig Claesson of [[Uppsala University]] published in 1946 his work on a charcoal column that also used mercury.<ref name="Ettre"/>
Gerhard Hesse, while a professor at the [[University of Marburg]]/Lahn decided to test the prevailing opinion among German chemists that molecules could not be separated in a moving gas stream. He set up a simple glass column filled with starch and successfully separated bromine and iodine using nitrogen as the carrier gas. He then built a system that flowed an inert gas through a glass condenser packed with silica gel and collected the eluted fractions.<ref name="Ettre"/>
Courtenay S.G Phillips of Oxford University investigated separation in a charcoal column using a thermal conductivity detector. He consulted with Claesson and decided to use displacement as his separating principle. After learning about the results of James and Martin, he switched to partition chromatography.<ref name="Ettre"/>