Second Nobel prize medal for partition chromatography to be auctioned

The 1952 Nobel prize in chemistry medal awarded to British biochemist Richard Synge for his groundbreaking invention of partition chromatography more than a decade earlier will be auctioned off at the end of May.

Partition chromatography can separate chemicals distributed between two liquid phases and it transformed the emerging field of molecular biology in the second half of the 20th century. It was used to demonstrate that purines from DNA were present in the same ratio as their pyrimidine partner, providing important information to elucidate the molecule’s structure. The technique also allowed the separation and sequencing of insulin, an achievement that led to Frederick Sanger winning the chemistry Nobel Prize in 1958 and later a treatment for diabetes.