What Exactly did The British Chromatography Industry Bring to the Table?

At a recent meeting organised by The Chromatographic Society called to discuss the alarming drop in research funding, especially by government bodies, into the field of Separation Sciences the question of ?What is the track record of such funding actually resulting in products of tangible benefit to the bench chemist previously?? was muted. Many people are familiar with the role that chromatography plays in the field of aiding the drug development programme of every single block busting drug of the last 25 years yet there are numerous other application areas where discoveries made by British Scientists have allowed breakthroughs in areas such as Environmental, Food and Beverage, Oil and Gas and the bioprocessing fields. Whether it be innovation or evolution UK scientists have been at the forefront with their skills in basic research and product development for many years benefiting not only the UK community but the global one also.. The difficulty when putting together a retrospective view such as this is not so much what to include but what to leave out. In addition since we are picking a relatively small number of items from a long list of products developed over a 30 years plus period of time some filtration is required. Products that are known, in the main, internationally and launched into the market pre-1990 were chosen on this occasion.