We are gathered here today to remember Csaba Horvath. The large attendance shows the love and respect we all had for him. I knew Csaba as a friend and colleague for over 40 years. We first met in Boston in 1964 when I had just begun as a faculty member at Northeastern University and Csaba was a post doc at Harvard Medical School. I remember well his advice to me, you should really look into high pressure liquid chromatography – at that time I was studying gas chromatography. It took me 3 years before I followed his advice. We also talked about hydrophobic interaction, and he said it was going to be really important in liquid chromatography. Even at this early stage Csaba had a tremendous intuition of what was important in separation science. This intuition was born from his deep understanding of chromatography and the needs of the scientists who would apply the method. My next memory is the early 1970’s when Csaba, Lloyd Snyder and I wrote the text book “An Introduction to Separation Science”. This book went on to become the standard graduate text of the field of separations for over a quarter of a century. The success was in no small measure due to Csaba’s exposition of the fundamentals of chromatography. Over the next 25 years I followed Csaba’s career closely. There were many scientific advances from his laboratory – a theoretical framework of reversed phase liquid chromatography, the introduction of high resolution peptide separations, an understanding of ion pair chromatography and the introduction of electro-chromatography, to name a few. Csaba’s talks were always the highlight of the HPLC meetings. For a number of years our two laboratories met once or twice year. My group would go to Yale, and his group would visit us at Northeastern. Students from each of our groups would give talks in the afternoon, and then we had a beer and pizza party in the evening. Through these common meetings the students of the two groups got to know each other very well, and in one case, after they graduated, even married each other. Last summer, Bill Hancock and I came down to Yale to visit Csaba and have lunch with him. He was, of course, not well at that time. I got the idea during this visit to recognize Csaba before his countrymen in Hungary and the coming generation of students at the Balaton meeting that was held last September. As I began my talk, I presented pictures of various Hungarians who played a major role in chromatography including Leslie Ettre, Istvan Halasz and Ervin Kovats. I then included Csaba and talked about his achievements. I need to tell you a funny story at this point, as most of you know Csaba had a wonderful capability of falling asleep during lectures. This time he stayed awake while I made laudatory comments about him. But as soon as I got into my lecture he went off to sleep and slept fully throughout the whole lecture. Csaba was a loyal friend to all. He never had a bad word to say about anyone. His commitment to science and scientific rigor was complete. He was a respected and loved individual, again, as witnessed by the turnout today. For all the chromatographers of his generation, let me say we have lost a dear friend. Csaba, your memory will always be with us, and your legacy is in the science you produced and the students you trained. |