Jan van Deemter

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Jan Jozef van Deemter (31 March 1918 – 10 October 2004) was a Dutch physicist and engineer best known for the Van Deemter equation in chromatography. He studied at the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam, where he earned his PhD in physics in 1950. His doctoral thesis was on the theoretical and numerical treatment of dehydration and infiltration-flow problems, supervised by Bartel Leendert van der Waerden.

In 1947, van Deemter began working as a researcher for Royal Dutch Shell. While there, he developed and published the Van Deemter equation in 1956. The equation shows how the height of a theoretical plate (HETP), a measure of peak broadening, depends on flow and kinetic factors: A is eddy diffusion, B is longitudinal diffusion, C is the resistance to mass transfer between the mobile and stationary phases, and u is the linear velocity of the mobile phase.

Van Deemter passed away on 10 October 2004 at the age of 86.