After having obtained his Ph.D. in 1948 by the University of Illinois, Professor James S. Fritz became Senior Chemist and Professor of Chemistry at Iowa State University in 1960. He was named Distinguished Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1990. Besides Ion Chromatography his research interests are titrations, solid-phase extractions, capillary electrophoresis and analytical complexing reagents. He has authored or coauthored several scientific books, including Fritz and Gjerde's "Ion Chromatography", now in its 4th printing. In addition, he has published more than 325 scientific publications.

Douglas T. Gjerde received his PhD in analytical chemistry from Iowa State University. After having worked in large and small companies for a number of years, Gjerde founded Sarasep, Inc. in 1990 for the commercialization of polymeric separation technologies and co-founded Transgenomic, Inc. in 1997 for the commercialization of nucleic acid separation technology. He is now working on his third start-up company, PhyNexus, Inc. PhyNexus produces miniaturized sample preparation tools for the biological research market. Gjerde has authored and coauthored numerous articles, book chapters and 5 books and holds over fifty patents in separation science.