The Icons of Chromatography series continues with Kevin Schug from the University of Texas at Arlington talking to Harold McNair from Virginia Tech about his illustrious career in chromatography.

Who introduced you to GC?

Dr A.J.P. Martin, Dr Steve Dal Nogare and Prof. A.I.M. Keulemans. You could not have wished for a better group of mentors. In 1957, I performed my first GC injections. I was a graduate student at Purdue University and had just finished a Masters in electrochemistry. I wanted an exciting new topic for my PhD work. I took a summer job at Amoco’s Research Labs in Whiting, Indiana, USA. My job was to screen around 80 new liquid phases for selectivity to separate butane-1 and iso-butylene as well as some C18 unsaturated methyl esters. During the summer job, Nobel Laureate A.J.P. Martin came to the labs to install his new gas density balance detector.

I was assigned as his “gofor” for the day. It was a memorable experience; he really turned me on to GC with his knowledge and enthusiasm and tips on making tea (heat the cup!). The next summer, I worked with Steve Dal Nogare from DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, USA and was indoctrinated in temperature-programmed GC. Steve was a great mentor and very enthusiastic about GC. Finally, my Fulbright fellowship with Professor A.I.M. Keulemans in 1959, convinced me I would work on GC for as long as I could. So many of the pioneers in GC came to his lab and I was fortunate to work with many of them — and this fired my enthusiasm for GC.

What do you see as your greatest achievement in the field?

My greatest achievement is collaborating with my students — undergraduates, graduates, post-doctoral fellows — and visiting professors (easily over 200 total). This group of intelligent, humorous, hard-working people made my research and teaching both interesting and challenging — most of the time! It would be unfair to mention any single individual as there were too many major breakthroughs from a wide range of people. Highlights would definitely include reporting the first capillary GC–MS results in 1961; introducing temperature programmed LC in 1981; using mobile phase modifiers to stabilize retention times on silica gel; developing the first directly coupled LC/GC experiment using two independent computers in 1981; identifying the role of pH in CZE to add to the electrostatic mobility of highly hydrated protons: and also early work on analysing steroids in urine by GC-TOF-MS. The latter study was one of the earliest demonstrations of the use of TOF-MS coupled to GC for determining traces of steroids in urine and this work was honoured with an “outstanding Ph.D. thesis award” from Virginia Tech.

A research project in 1976, which correlated pKb’s of weak aromatic amines with retention time on acidic silica gel, was recognized by NASA as the second most cited scientific publication for that year. The Viking-Mars Landing was Number One! Our work was one of the first publications on the LC analysis of aromatic diamines. Not only did this class of compounds hold high interest for NASA in relation to polymer research, but they also held high biological significance; thus, many researchers in the biomedical and pharmaceutical communities also paid close attention to this work.

But equally as important as the quality of the scientific publications was the work ethic, the group effort and strong friendships established while at Virginia Tech. Some of the best memories were the long van rides to Pittcon each year. I was always so proud when one of my students gave a great lecture at some conference. I am still in contact with almost all of my former students.

Did you consider entering academia after your post-doctoral fellowship?

Not really, I was focused on industry. I had spent five summers working in industry at Phillips Petroleum Co., Amoco Central Research, American Cyananid, DuPont and Esso Analytical R&D. I knew industry had better equipment, strong support staff and services, real significant problems and, of course, much better pay. In fact, when I did come to Virginia Tech in 1968, my plan was to stay only a few years then go back into international marketing, hopefully in Europe, in the scientific instrument business. But after three years, I fell in love with teaching students, choosing my own research projects, being able to play tennis almost any time, any day and Blacksburg was a great place to raise a family.

Incidentally, I did actually get a tennis and a scholastic scholarship for the University of Arizona and played there for two years until the number of Physics and Chemistry labs every week left no time for tennis. I still enjoy hitting and try to play two or three times a week.

You told me that two of your favourite activities: teaching short courses and writing books came from your industrial experience. Why is this?

After one year with Esso R&D in 1961, I returned to Europe to set up operations for F&M Scientific (later H.P., Avondale, Pennsylvania, USA). Even though Europe had introduced and pioneered the art of GC, there were few progressive instrument manufacturers. F+M Scientific and later Aerograph (Varian) realized the importance of TPGC; both became major leaders in the field based on the quality of their instrumentation. I lived in Amsterdam 1962–64 and European customers were begging for seminars, hands-on training courses, booklets; anything to help them learn about GC. Part of my job was then — and still is — telling everyone how great GC really is. My book Basic GC originated from a lecture at the University of Athens, Greece in 1963. After one lecture, the faculty begged me to come back the next day. After four lectures in four days, they begged me to write up the lectures, which became the first draft of Basic GC. It is written in straight-forward English for Europeans with English as their second language. It was a simple book, easy-to-read and was eventually translated into eight different languages with over 130 000 copies sold.

After joining Varian in 1965, I set up a one-person unit, GC training, which offered “hands-on” GC training, across the US initially, but later in Europe, Canada, Australia and Mexico. This was a huge success. The unit not only showed a small profit each year, but also, as I recall, about 20% of all attendees bought or had already bought a Varian GC. It was a great marketing success.

Thus logically, I carried the model for short courses and GC books with me to Blacksburg. The short courses helped train my students, generate money in my earlier academic career, recruit new graduate students and several companies left their best chromatographic systems in my labs.

What do you see as the most exciting development in separation science at the moment/the future?

LC–MS applied to biological compounds. So many people who are not trained as chemists or chromatographers are buying and using LC–MS regularly to study important problems that involve the analysis of complex mixtures of biomolecules.

Harold M. McNair is known by his friends, students and colleagues as one of the early pioneers of gas chromatography. His interests in separation science led him through a number of industrial positions before landing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, USA in 1968. Since that time, McNair has made many significant research contributions and his initiation and instruction of a variety of short courses in the areas of gas chromatography (GC), gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and sample preparation.

He participated in the first ACS short course ever given (on GC) in 1967. He is credited with the development of six different ACS short courses, and he has taught close to 200 sessions in the past 30 years. These courses are not only an enjoyable and welcoming environment for industrial, government and academic scientists across the world to learn and hone their separation science skills, but also a unique environment for undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students in the McNair group to experience the exceptional value of these efforts.

McNair was born in Miami, Arizona, USA and received BS degrees in chemistry and physics (magna cum laude) from the University of Arizona in 1955. He then obtained his MS and PhD degrees from Purdue University and, shortly thereafter, embarked on a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Eindhoven Technical University, in The Netherlands. His initial work in GC, which began at Purdue University, blossomed from this point forward and since the latter part of the 20th century, McNair has been considered as one of the foremost authorities on the theory and application of virtually all mainstream separation techniques.

McNair has received many awards for his work, including the K.P. Dimick Award (1991), the Tswett Medal (1993), the Dal Nogare Award (2001), the Horvath Medal (2003) and most recently, the LCGC Lifetime Achievement in Chromatography Award (2009). McNair was granted Professor Emeritus status in 2002, however he is still actively engaged (and funded) in his research efforts that focus primarily on homeland security.

Kevin A. Schug received his PhD in Chemistry from Virginia Tech under McNair in 2002, performed post-doctoral research with Professor Wolfgang Lindner at the University of Vienna (2003–2005) and is currently assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Research in the Schug lab spans the fundamentals and applications of liquid-phase separations, in conjunction with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). Additionally, ESI-MS is studied as a means for preserving and analysing noncovalent complex formation between small molecules, while MALDI-MS is used for fingerprinting complex mixtures.

Most recently, Schug has been the recipient of the 2009 LCGC Emerging Leader in Chromatography Award and a NSF CAREER award. Schug credits his research and teaching principles to his previous mentors: Harold McNair and Wolfgang Lindner. He currently manages a group of 15 graduate and undergraduate students at U.T. Arlington.