2008 Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley Dal Nogare Award

The 2008 Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley Dal Nogare Award was presented Monday morning to John G. Dorsey, the Katherine Blood Hoffman Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University, by Mike Koenigbauer, President of the Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley. Mary Ellen P. McNally, DuPont Crop Protection, presided over the session. The award was presented for Dorsey's teaching and research accomplishments in the field of liquid chromatography (LC). Recipients of the Dal Nogare Award are chosen for their contributions to the fundamental understanding of the chromatographic process. The award was established in honor of Stephen Dal Nogare, who died in 1968 after serving as president of the Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley.

After accepting the award, Dorsey presented a talk titled "A Random Walk through Liquid Chromatography" in which he provided an overview of his career in the field and thanked the students and collaborators contributing to his success. He noted that LC is the third most used analytical chemistry technique, after the use of analytical balances and pH meters.

Dorsey’s research interests include fundamental and applied separation and flow analysis, including LC, capillary electrophoresis, and flow injection analysis; the prediction of retention in reversed-phase LC; and open-tubular capillary electrophoresis, in which analytes are separated in 50–100 µm i.d. capillaries. His research has focused on the use of micelles as eluent modifiers for reversed-phase LC and solvatochromic probes for investigating the retention process in reversed-phase LC. According to Dorsey, "separation techniques are the necessary evil for most real analyses, as most samples are far too complex to be analyzed by a direct method. The basic thesis underlying our research efforts is to better understand the chemistry of the separation process, and to use that understanding for the solution of practical problems facing analytical chemists."

Other awards Dorsey has received include the 2004 Florida Section Award of the American Chemical Society, the 2004 Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Achievements in Separation Science, and the 2006 American Chemical Society Award in Chromatography. Since 1999, Dorsey has served as editor of the Journal of Chromatography.