This Letter reports a technique of measuring polar surface energy distributions of lactose using inverse gas chromatography (IGC). The significance of this study is that the total surface energy distributions can now be characterized by combining the already known dispersive surface energy distribution with polar surface energy distribution determined in this study. The polar surface energy was calculated from the specific free energies for surface interactions with a monopolar basic probe, ethyl acetate, and a monopolar acidic probe, dichloromethane.