Csaba Horváth
January 25, 1930–April 13, 2004
It is with great sadness and sense of loss that we announce the passing of Csaba Horváth, R. C. Goizueta Professor of Chemical Engineering at Yale University. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him and had the privilege of interacting with him.
Dr. Horváth was born in Szolnok, Hungary, on January 25, 1930. He graduated as a chemical engineer from the Technical University in Budapest and joined the staff in the Department of Chemical Technology. In 1956, he moved to West Germany where he took a position at Farbwerke Hoechst AG in Frankfurt. He researched the surface chemistry of organic pigments there.
Later, with the help of Dr. István Halasz, Csaba Horváth entered the University of Frankfurt, where he received his PhD degree. In his thesis, he reported some novel types of columns for gas chromatography. He applied this knowledge later for the development of stationary phases and columns for HPLC and capillary electrochromatography.
In 1963, after receiving his PhD in physical chemistry, he married Valeria Scioscioli in Rome and later moved to the United States. He joined the Physics Research Laboratory of Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Later, he moved to Yale University where he obtained a position in S. R. Lipsky's laboratory in the Medical School.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dr. Horváth concentrated on understanding the fundamentals of HPLC. Csaba Horváth is considered, by many of his contemporaries, to be the father of HPLC. He applied instrumental principles to better control the chromatographic process and to develop the full potential of high performance liquid chromatography. Although he made many innovative contributions to the science and technology of HPLC, his ground-breaking developments include the development of theory and practice of reverse phase chromatography and setting forth the solvophobic theory for the treatment of this widely applied branch of chromatography.
Dr. Horváth published close to 300 scientific papers and held nine patents. He co-authored the book, Introduction to Separation Science and he has edited several volumes of HPLC-Advances and Perspectives. He served on the boards of nine scientific journals, including the Journal of Liquid Chromatography & Related Technologies ®. He has received many awards, too numerous to list here; suffice it to say that he was one of the most highly regarded and decorated scientists in his field of research. In February of this year, Professor Csaba Horváth was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for “pioneering the concept and reduction to practice of high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and for leadership in the development of bioanalytical techniques.”
Csaba Horváth is survived by his two daughters, Donatella and Katalin, by his former wife, and by his sister, Tunde Pungor, in Hungary.