Mikhail Zwet

Mikhail Semjonowitsch Zwet

Michail Semjonowitsch Zwet ( Russian Михаил Семёнович Цвет , in literature mostly as Tswett , but also as Tsvett, Tswet, Tsvet or Cvet; * May 19, 1872 in Asti / Italy ; † June 26, 1919 in Voronezh / Russia ) was a Russian botanist and the inventor of chromatography .

resume

Zwet was born as the son of the Russian Semjon Zwet and the Italian Marie Dorroza in Asti, northern Italy. His mother died early after his birth, and Zwet grew up in Geneva . From 1891 to 1896 he was a student at the University of Geneva , where he first studied mathematics and physics and graduated. In 1893 he decided to study botany. He finished his studies in 1896 with a dissertation on cell physiology. Then he went to Saint Petersburg . There, however, his studies in Switzerland were not recognized, so that Zwet had to reappropriate the corresponding degrees in Russia. In St. Petersburg he then became a lecturer in plant anatomy and physiology. In 1902 he went to Warsaw , where he initially worked as an assistant at the university . In 1903 he became a private lecturer and in 1907 a professor at the Botanical Institute of the Polytechnic in Warsaw. With the outbreak of World War I , the Warsaw Polytechnic was evacuated to Moscow and in 1916 to Gorky . In 1917 Zwet then received a professorship for botany at the Estonian University of Tartu , where he also became director of the botanical garden. When German and Austrian troops occupied Tartu on February 23, 1918, the university was relocated to Voronezh . Zwet died there a year later of chronic heart disease.

His work

In 1903 Zwet published his first work on chromatography. He filled in a glass tube, for example, inulin (a sugar mixture) and poured out an in ligroin dissolved chlorophyll - extract . He let the mixture run down in the glass tube and poured further pure ligroin from above. The mixture separated into blue-green chlorophyll a and yellow-green chlorophyll b ; he characterized the components using a photometric method from Sorby. Zwet tested over 120 different powdery adsorbents (stationary phases). In addition to chlorophyll, he also separated carotene and xanthophyll by chromatography for the first time .

Grave of Michail Semjonowitsch Zwet with the inscription: "It was given to him to discover the chromatography, which separates the molecules and connects the people."

At a meeting of the biological section of the Warsaw Society of Natural Scientists, he presented his work results for the first time in 1903 under the title: On a new category of adsorption phenomena and their application to biochemical analysis . He describes the separation of the chlorophyll mixture as follows:

“First a colorless, then a yellow liquid flows out of the lower end of the tube, and a green ring forms in the upper layers of an inulin column, under which a yellow border appears. As the experiment continues, both rings, green and yellow, widen considerably and expand downwards. The possibility arises of developing a new method of physical separation of different substances that are dissolved in organic liquids. The method is based on the ability of the dissolved substances to enter into physical adsorption compounds with various mineral and solid bodies. "

- M. Tswett

Zwet called the process he discovered chromatography ( German : "color writing"). Coincidentally, Zwet (Цвет) means "color" in Russian.

Richard Willstätter used and improved this method for isolating chlorophyll as early as 1908 . The main inner belt asteroid (2770) Tsvet is named after him.

Publications

M. Tsvett: Sur la Chlorophylline blue . In: Comptes rendus 131 , pp. 842-844 (1900), digitized on Gallica .
M. Tsvett: Sur la pluralite des Chlorophyllines es sur las metachlorophyllines . In: Comptes rendus 132 , pp. 149-150 (1901), digitized on Gallica .
M. Tswett: O novoy kategorii adsorbtsionnykh yavleny io primenenii ikh k biokkhimicheskomu analizu. (A new category of adsorption phenomena and their application for biochemical analysis) : In: Trudy Varhavskago Obshchestva estevoispytatelei Otd Biol (Tr Warsawsk Obst Jestesv Otd Biol) 14/1903, pp. 20-39.

M. Tswett: Physico-chemical studies on chlorophyll. The adsorptions. In: Ber. German Offered. Ges. 24 , pp. 316-323 (1906), doi : 10.1111 / j.1438-8677.1906.tb06524.x .

M. Tswett: Adsorption analysis and chromatographic method. Application to the chemistry of chlorophyll. In: Ber. German Offered. Ges. 24 , pp. 384-393 (1906), doi : 10.1111 / j.1438-8677.1906.tb06534.x .

M. Tswett: About the next acid derivatives of the chlorophylline . In: Ber. German Chem. Ges. 41 , pp. 1352-1354 (1908), doi : 10.1002 / cber.190804101249 .

M. Tswett: The so-called »crystallized chlorophyll« - a mixture. In: Ber. German Chem. Ges. 43 , pp. 3139-3141 (1910), doi : 10.1002 / cber.19100430376 .

M. Tswett: About the solubility ratios of the chlorophyllins and a new method for isolating them . In: Ber. German Chem. Ges. 44 , pp. 1124-1127 (1911), doi : 10.1002 / cber.191104401166 .

Individual evidence

↑ M. Zwet: Études de physiologie cellulaire. In: Bulletin du Laboratoire de botanique générale de l'Université de Genève 1/1896, pp. 123-206.
^ HC Sorby, On Comparative Vegetable Chromatology in Proceed Roy. Soc. London 21 , pp. 442-483 (1872).
^ University of Bremen, Center for Environmental Research and Environmental Technology: Liquid Chromatography ( Memento from December 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), viewed on August 16, 2008
^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on September 13, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1977 SM ₁ . Discovered 1977 Sept. 19 by NS Chernykh at Nauchnyj. "

literature

MH Abraham: 100 years of chromatography - or is it 171? In: J. Chromatogr. A. 1061/2004, pp. 113-114. PMID 15633751
W. Ostrowski: Michael S. Tswett - inventor of column chromatography. (On the occasion of 65th anniversary of his lecture on the column chromatography technique). In: Folia Biol. (Kraków) 16/1968, pp. 429-48.
FM Schertz: The pure pigments, carotene and xanthophyll, and the Tswett adsorption method. In: Plant Physiol. 4/1929, pp. 337-348. PMID 16652617
Pages 226 - 228

Web links

Commons : Mikhail Tsvet - collection of images, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Zwet, Mikhail
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Zwet, Michail Semjonowitsch (full name); Tsvet, Mikhail; Цвет, Михаил Семёнович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian botanist, inventor of chromatography
DATE OF BIRTH	May 19, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH	Asti
DATE OF DEATH	June 26, 1919
Place of death	Voronezh

[1] M. Zwet: Études de physiologie cellulaire. In: Bulletin du Laboratoire de botanique générale de l'Université de Genève 1/1896, pp. 123-206.

[2] HC Sorby, On Comparative Vegetable Chromatology in Proceed Roy. Soc. London 21 , pp. 442-483 (1872).

[3] University of Bremen, Center for Environmental Research and Environmental Technology: Liquid Chromatography ( Memento from December 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), viewed on August 16, 2008

[4] Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on September 13, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1977 SM ₁ . Discovered 1977 Sept. 19 by NS Chernykh at Nauchnyj. "