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MALDI is tolerant to a high level of contaminants, allows quantitative analysis, and can provide structure-specific information for identification. One important factor in the quantitative analysis of heme is having an internal standard that is chemically identical to the analyte, or as close as possible, says Whiteaker. “We evaluated several protoporphyrin compounds with chemical structures similar to heme and found a cobalt (III) protoporphyrin IX compound to give the best performance,” he says. The researchers used the MALDITOFMS method to analyze spore sam-
ples grown on blood and nonblood agar. The samples were prepared using a modified sandwich deposition technique, in which a layer of matrix crystals was placed on the target spot and dried via fast evaporation. A mixture of the sample and matrix was then placed on top of the matrix layer. The resulting mass spectra from spores grown on blood agar showed a peak at m/z 616.2, but this peak was absent in spores prepared without blood agar. The results show that heme can be detected in sporulated samples prepared
on blood agar but not in those prepared without blood. The researchers estimate that 0.5–1.0 mg of purified spores are needed for the qualitative determination of heme. For quantitative purposes, they estimate that ~5 mg of spores are needed. Whiteaker believes this is only the first step in the forensic use of MS for biological agent detection. “While our method uses a marker for the use of blood agar, it may be possible to find other markers that tell us more about how a sample was prepared,” he says. a —Wilder D. Smith
Budapest, Hungary. He left Hungary in 1956 and worked for a few years at Farbwerke Hoechst AG in Frankfurtam-Main. He later did his doctoral research on porous-layer open-tubular GC columns under the supervision of István Halász. He then moved to the United States where, under the direction of S. R. Lipsky in the School of Medicine of Yale University, he began working on the development of analytical methodologies for lunar samples. This led him to build the first instrument for HPLC. After becoming a professor in the chemical engineering department of Yale University, Csaba devoted all of his attention to the development of the theory and the applications of reversed-phase LC. His landmark paper, “Solvophobic interactions in liquid-chromatography with nonpolar stationary phases” (J. Chromatogr. 1976, 125, 129), has been cited 985 times (ISI Web of Knowledge). He also is the author or coauthor of 300 publications (10% of them have been cited more than 100 times since their publication) and has presented hundreds of lectures at meetings and seminars all over the world. He was deeply interested in philology and forged numerous words. Some (e.g., isocratic and multimodal) have become so common that their origin is lost; others still delight his friends, such as the four ailments of analytical biologists—lithophobia, sidero-
phobia, barophobia, and adiaphanophobia— the fear of silica, the fear of steel, the fear of pressure, and the fear of devices that are not transparent. Among the numerous honors that Csaba received are the Dal Nogare Award of the Forum of the Delaware Valley (1978), the Humboldt Award for Senior American Scientists (1982), the Chromatography Awards of the American Chemical Society (1983) and the Eastern Analytical Symposium (1986), the Separation Sciences Award of the American Chemical Society (2001), and the I. Halász Medal Award of the Hungarian Separation Science Society (1997). The Halász Award was particularly dear to his heart, as was the Honorary Doctorate received earlier from his alma mater, the Technical University of Budapest (1986). In January 2004, Csaba was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. While his work has had a profound influence on the development of analytical biochemistry, advancing the progress of the life sciences for the past 30 years, his influence on an immense number of scientists has been even greater. The grief of the “Csabaites” community is heartbreaking, and we share it. Csaba Horváth’s memory will live forever in all of us. a —Georges Guiochon and Lois Ann Beaver
PEOPLE Csaba Horváth (1930–2004) Csaba Horváth, the Roberto C. Goizueta Professor of Chemical Engineering at Yale University and one of the founders of HPLC, died on April 13 in New Haven, Conn. He was 74 years old. Csaba invented porous-layer open-tubular GC columns and designed and built the first high-performance liquid chromatograph and the first microbore HPLC columns (for ion-exchange separations of biological compounds). Csaba pioneered the use of reversedphase HPLC, the most widely applied chromatographic method of analysis; the use of displacement chromatography for preparative HPLC; and innumerable applications of HPLC to the separation of samples of biological origin. He developed the solvophobic theory of retention in reversed-phase LC, the use of entropy–enthalpy compensation in the study of retention mechanisms, and the fundamentals of electrochromatography. Csaba graduated as a chemical engineer from the Technical University in
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