1872-1919

Russian botanist who developed chromatography, the technique for separating the pigments that made up plant dyes. Tsvet's method has been extensively used for identifying many biologically important materials, especially after it was adapted to use paper as the support. Paper chromatography has been widely used to study colorless amino acids, steroids, carbohydrates, and other complex materials of natural origin. Tsvet is also noted for his research on chlorophyll, of which he discovered several new forms, and the carotenoids, a term he first coined.