In 1984, Robert Bruce Merrifield, a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (Ph.D. 1949) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix.

Following graduation, Merrifield joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research where he worked as an Assistant for Dr. D.W. Woolley who was to have a profound influence on his career. They worked on a dinucleotide growth factor he discovered in graduate school and on peptide growth factors that Woolley had discovered earlier. These studies led to the need for peptide synthesis and, eventually, to the idea for solid phase peptide synthesis in 1959.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Merrifield developed a method for avoiding significant impurities in the final product that result from a relatively small amount of impurities in each step. If a chain-formed molecule in solid form is attached to the first amino acid, impurities can be rinsed away between every step. This process can be carried out mechanically.