Archer John Porter Martin, the only son of four children, was born on March 1, 1910, in London, England, to William Archer Porter Martin, a physician, and Lilian Kate Brown, a nurse. Martin attended high school in Bedford and graduated in 1929. Intent on becoming a chemical engineer, he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, on a merit scholarship and studied chemistry, physics, mathematics, and mineralogy. While at Cambridge, he met Professor John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, became interested in biochemistry, and changed his major to that subject. He received a B.S. degree in 1932 and became a researcher in the physical chemistry laboratory of the university. With a colleague, Nora Wooster, he published an article in Nature in 1932, describing the preparation and mounting of deliquescent materials, solid substances that become liquid as they absorb moisture from the air.

In their laboratories at Cambridge, Martin and colleague Richard Synge became interested in chromatography in the...