Wool Industries Research Association
The Wool Industries Research Association was an industrial research organization in the United Kingdom. It later became the Wira Technology Group before being merged with the Shirley Institute in the 1989 to form the British Textile Technology Group. It was funded by a levy raised under powers from the Industrial Organisation and Development Act 1947 through the Wool Textile Research Council, established in 1950. Notable employees Richard Laurence Millington Synge Jim Marshall (UK politician) David Cox (statistician) Archer J.P. Martin Martin and Synge Archer J.P. Martin and Richard L.M. Synge worked together at the Wool Industries Research Association in Leeds. In 1941 they published a paper entitled ‘A New Form of Chromatogram Employing Two Liquid Phases’ in the Biochemical Journal. Martin and Synge described how they had used columns of silica with water, used as the stationary phase, whilst a second, non-miscible liquid, flowed down the column. The second liquid was the organic solvent chloroform, and they separated acetamino-acids from protein hydrolysates. The components of the mixture separated were distributed between the two phases, depending on their relative affinity for each of the phases. As the components spread, they became separated from each other, and could be collected as they