Chromatography Today talks to David McCalley, Chromatographic Society Jubilee Medallist 2008 - Chromatography Today

How did you become interested in chromatography?

I took an MSc course in Analytical Chemistry at Bristol University after my first degree. Somehow it felt better learning about things that had an immediate and obvious application. Such feelings were reinforced
with my project at one of the Bristol Hospitals, where I was using gas chromatography to develop methods used for the diagnosis of metabolic diseases in young babies. I left Bristol for a year to become a research assistant at Imperial College, using atomic absorption and plasma emission spectroscopy to look at metal pollution around the country as a result of natural geology and mining and smelting activities. It was great fun collecting the samples, but compared with the mysteries and uncertainties of the “black art” of chromatography, metals analysis seemed very straightforward. Developments seemed
mostly governed by engineering advances by instrument companies. So I returned to Bristol to do a PhD, mostly using GC and GCMS to analyse sterols as tracers for sewage pollution. At the time, there was much interest in column production methods, and applications of the (relatively new) capillary columns. I still got to collect some samples, but not always from as scenic places as previously!