Archer John Porter Martin, the only son of four children, was born on March 1, 1910, in London, England, to William Archer Porter Martin, a physician, and Lilian Kate Brown, a nurse. Martin attended high school in Bedford and graduated in 1929. Intent on becoming a chemical engineer, he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, on a merit scholarship and studied chemistry, physics, mathematics, and mineralogy. While at Cambridge, he met Professor John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, became interested in biochemistry, and changed his major to that subject. He received a B.S. degree in 1932 and became a researcher in the physical chemistry laboratory of the university. With a colleague, Nora Wooster, he published an article in Nature in 1932, describing the preparation and mounting of deliquescent materials, solid substances that become liquid as they absorb moisture from the air.
In their laboratories at Cambridge, Martin and colleague Richard Synge became interested in chromatography in the early 1930s. Chromatography is a technique that separates parts of a mixture as it moves over a porous solid. Richard Willstätter, a German scientist, had developed a technique for separating plant pigments but had not been able to separate more complex substances. Martin and Synge had been searching for a method that would isolate the constituents of carotene, a ruby-red pigment that is present in various plants and animals and is the precursor of vitamin A. They found the compounds would move in columns or zones in a tube packed with porous materials like starch, cellulose, or silicagel.
While continuing his work at Cambridge, Martin held the Grocers' Scholarship for original medical research from 1934 to 1936. He worked under Sir Charles Martin, and he later credited this distinguished scientist as the greatest influence on his work in biochemistry. He received his M.A. degree in 1935 and a Ph.D. in 1936 from the University of Cambridge. In 1938 Martin became a biochemist at the Wool Industries Research Association Laboratory in Leeds. He stayed there through 1946. His studies involved the composition of wool felting and amino acid analysis. While working at this laboratory, he conceived the idea of separating amino acids using porous paper.
Several previous researchers had been frustrated in their efforts to break down proteins into amino acids. Building on their earlier studies at Cambridge, Martin and Synge devised paper partition chromatography in 1944. In this new technique, substances move in columns on sheets of paper instead of in an absorbent in a glass tube. The technique proved an instant success in separating proteins into their base amino acids. Martin and Synge worked the paper chromatography technique in the following manner. A drop of amino acid mixture is put near the bottom of a strip of porous paper and allowed to dry. The edge of the paper is dipped in a solvent which spreads through the strip by capillary action. As the solvent goes through the dried amino acid mixture, different amino acids move with the solvent at varying rates. Hence, the amino acids are separated and can be studied. The news of this new technique spread rapidly throughout the scientific community. Because of chromatography, other scientists made great strides. For example, Frederick Sanger was able to identify the order of amino acids in the insulin molecule, and Melvin Calvin was able to work out the mechanism of photosynthesis. Paper chromatography also contributed to advances in the biochemical knowledge of the sterols, an enormous array of substances that play a role in the life processes. Martin's work in chromatography received the highest recognition in 1952, when he and Synge were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Martin worked at Boots Pure Drug Research Company, Nottingham, from 1946 to 1948. During this time, he and colleagues R. Consden and A. H. Gordon identified lower peptides in complex mixtures using paper chromatography. He joined the Medical Research Council at Lister Institute, Chelsea, London, in 1948 and accepted a post as head of the physical chemistry division of the National Institute of Medical Research in Mars Hill, London, in 1952. Continuing to apply paper chromatography, Martin studied sugars in a variety of substances and the partition of fatty acids. In 1953 his studies led him to gas-liquid chromatography, a method of separating volatile substances by blowing them down a long tube filled with inert gas. Gas-liquid chromatography is an adaptation of the paper chromatography technique.
Martin has written many articles on chromatography for journals and worked at major international universities. From 1956 to 1959 he was a chemical consultant, and he acted as a director to Abbotsbury Laboratories from 1959 to 1970. He was consultant to the Wellcome Foundation from 1970 to 1973. He has held professorships at Eindoven Technological University, Holland; at the University of Sussex; at the University of Houston, Texas; and at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in France. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1950 and in 1951 received the Berzelius Gold Medal from the Swedish Medical Society. He is also the recipient of honorary doctorates from the universities of Leeds, Glasgow, and Urbino.
Martin married Judith Bagenal, a teacher, on January 9, 1943. They have two sons and three daughters. While in college he developed a love for the self-defense art of Jiu-Jitsu and in the past has enjoyed gliding and mountaineering.
Martin dies at age 92 on July 28, 2002.
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