Archer John Porter Martin and a colleague named Synge were awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1952 for work that they had completed many years before. I had lunch with Martin once in the Perkin-Elmer executive dining room and it was an event making up in novelty and interest for what it lacked in all other respects.

In the 30’s Martin and Synge were working at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, England, and did some pioneering work requiring the separation of mixtures of heavy biochemical compounds such as carbohydrates and amino acids. The method they developed came to be known as partition chromatography. Nowadays, its descendants, gas chromatography and liquid chromatography, are common techniques used in chemical labs throughout the world. There’s not much doubt that they deserved the prize, even though, between then and now, many others have contributed to the further development of the technique.

He signed his publications “A. J. P. Martin”. Those who A. J. P. recognized as a peer could call him Archer, those who wished they were his peer called him Archer, but never to his face, and the rest of us knew of him as A. J. P. and called him Dr. Martin.

Someone at Perkin-Elmer must have invited him to visit us, but the day that he chose to show up none of the You-may-call-me-Archer crowd was around. My boss, Ken Patrick, (by the way, the best boss I ever had) managed to collect a few of us for an opportunity to visit with A. J. P. over a cocktail and lunch. All of us knew a little, or even a lot, about chromatography, but not at the level to carry on a conversation with a Cambridge PhD cum Nobel Prize. Even my loquacious pal, Jack Beaudean (physics major but super chromatography salesman by trade), ran out of small talk after a few minutes. The ice-cold Martini was the warmest thing in the room, and the atmosphere got stiffer and cooler as time went on.

Until, for some reason, Ken started to talk about horses, horse racing and reading the racing form. It was as if we put A. J. P. in a microwave and defrosted him for a minute or so. It was soon a dialog between “Archer” and “Ken”; the rest of us just relaxed and ate and listened. At that lunch with the chromatography guru I learned a little about horse racing, a lot about my boss and practically nothing about chromatography.

It reminded me of my first boss at Perkin-Elmer (also a good guy), who grew up on a farm in Iowa but had a Physics PhD from Yale and worked at the Radiation Lab at MIT during WWII. He would pick his spots, but when all else failed he would move into his farm-boy-from-Iowa persona and make points that way. “Never failed,” he said. When I later mentioned this to Ken he said “Oh no, I was desperate.” He explained that except for being an ex-Navy Captain, which he was sure A. J. P. didn’t want to hear about, the only other thing he knew a lot about was horse racing, so he thought he would give it a try. I told him that if he picked his spots it would always work.

Many years later I learned that the English gentry, judged by how often they commissioned Stubbs for particular paintings, probably esteemed their horses more than their families.