The Encyclopedia of Mass Spectrometry: Volume 9: Historical Perspectives, Part B: Notable People in Mass Spectrometry

Yost

Introduction to Part B: Criteria for Inclusion in these Biographies of Notable People in Mass Spectrometry

Keith A. Nier,    Independent Historian, Madison, NJ, USA

Alfred L. Yergey,    National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA

P. Jane Gale,    Waters Corp., Milford, MA, USA

Abstract

This set of biographical articles includes people who have been recognized by their peers through major scientific awards for work specifically in or centrally dependent upon mass spectrometry. A number of additional pioneering figures have also been included. Unavoidable limitations in the availability of information and of authors, as well as in the editors' knowledge and time, have no doubt resulted in the omission of some notable people, including those whose importance for mass spectrometry has primarily been for all the kinds of work that are not commonly recognized by major awards.

Keywords

Awards; Honors; Inclusion; Pioneers; Scientific community

People advance mass spectrometry, and while they almost always do it through working with still more people, specific individuals stand out as crucial in all manner of ways to the development of the world of mass spectrometry. Any history of mass spectrometry must devote substantial attention to the people responsible for the devices, techniques, and applications that moved the field forward. The following biographical articles highlight some of the key individuals who have made this area of science and technology grow the way it has.

The volume editors and the general editors of the whole encyclopedia agreed that the selection of individuals for biographical entries should reflect as much as possible the judgment of the scientific community rather than the personal views of the editors. In selecting individuals for inclusion, our goal has been to identify people who have earned major scientific honors for work specifically on aspects of mass spectrometry or who have advanced applications that centrally rely upon mass spectrometry. Efforts were made to obtain an autobiographical or biographical article for all those people whose advances of the techniques, devices, or applications of mass spectrometers brought them such recognition.

The scientific honors in question are the International Mass Spectrometry Conference's Thomson Medal, the ASMS's Distinguished Contribution to Mass Spectrometry award, the American Chemical Society's Field and Franklin award, and the following honors – the Nobel Prize, Crafoord Prize, membership in the National Academy of Sciences, fellowship in the Royal Society of London, the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Chemical Instrumentation, and the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award – in those cases when mass spectrometric work was central to the selection. Beyond the cases in which the scientific community has declared who was notable through award recognition, the editors added after careful consultation some major pioneering figures in the history of mass spectrometry, most of whom retired or died before many of these awards were well established.

Some other honors were considered but it turned out they rarely added any names to the composite list. Awards specifically limited to younger researchers were not included. The editors note that various people involved with mass spectrometry may have achieved high honors for work that did not involve mass spectrometry and thus would be included here only if their contributions to mass spectrometry were so important that they must be regarded as major pioneers. Obvious instances include Wilhelm Wien, J. J. Thomson, and Harold Urey, each of whom won a Nobel Prize, but are included here not because of those honors but rather for their crucial work in the creation and development of mass spectrometry.

Many more scientists have achieved major honors for work in which mass spectrometry was important, though not really central. Two cases illustrate this kind of relationship. The work of Roger Guillemin and colleagues and of Andrew V. Schally and colleagues that in 1969 finally settled the nature of thyrotropin releasing factor, and which led to their sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 1977, did depend crucially upon mass spectrometry. However, that was only in the last stage of years of research, for most of which mass spectrometry was anything but central (1,2). The 1985 experiments that led to the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry going to Robert F. Curl, Jr., Harold Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley for discovering fullerenes did depend on mass spectrometry to identify what was produced, but it was essentially just a portion of the experimental arrangement in which the focus was on other matters (3). Thus these scientists and others in similar cases have not been included here despite making use of mass spectrometry in important ways and being highly honored by their peers.

It is important to stress that there are many more people than we have been able to cover in this volume whose work with mass spectrometry was of considerable importance. In some cases it has proven impossible to find an author to prepare the biographical entry; where possible, we have supplied what information we could to make up in part for the gap. For some people the editors do not know enough to be sure that the person should qualify. It is likely that more complete knowledge would have led to inclusion of additional people from outside the US. Finally, our decision to minimize our subjective views, as well as considerations of space, led us to leave out many people who have advanced the world of mass spectrometry significantly but in ways that are not usually rewarded with major prizes, such as providing education, running businesses, organizing conferences, running associations, editing journals, spreading information, and arranging funding.

Despite these and other limitations, it is clear that the 122 good and great scientists who are included here deserve recognition for their important contributions to the improvement and spread of mass spectrometry.

References

1. Guillemin R. Peptides in the Brian: The New Endocrinology of the Neuron Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1977. In: Lindsten J, ed. Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1971–1980. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.; 1992;364–397.

2. Schally AV. Aspects of Hypothalamic Regulation of the Pituitary Gland with Major Emphasis on Its Implications for the Control of Reproductive Processes Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1977. In: Lindsten J, ed. Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1971–1980. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.; 1992;405–438.

3. Smalley RE. Discovering the Fullerenes Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1996. In: Ingmar Grenthe I, ed. Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1996–2000. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.; 2003;89–103.

Arthur John Ahearn

Keith A. Nier,    Independent Historian, Madison, NJ, USA

b. 20 June, 1902

d. 12 June, 1990

Arthur Ahearn was an American physicist who greatly improved the capabilities of spark source mass spectrometry and significantly advanced the techniques of trace analysis.

Ahearn was born in New London, WI, US, in 1902. He graduated from Ripon College in Wisconsin in 1923, taught high school for a year, and began graduate studies in physics at the University of Minnesota in 1924. He began work for AT&T's Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1929 and completed his Minnesota Ph.D. while employed, finishing in 1931. He worked as a research physicist at Bell Labs until retirement in 1966. He then took a position as research physicist in the Spectrochemical Analysis Section of the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC, until 1970.

At Bell Labs, Ahearn's research involved many areas including electron emission, electron optics and microscopy, thermionics, and mass spectrometry. His most dramatic results came in work with N. B. Hannay, developing the first modern spark source mass spectrometer based on Mattauch-Herzog geometry. They showed that spark source mass spectrometry could measure semiconductor dopants at levels below the detection limit of emission spectroscopy and generally could detect sub-ppm impurity levels directly in a solid. The subject became of ever-greater importance as the role of semiconductor electronics increased in modern society.

Ahearn's work was recognized with the Spectroscopy award at Pittcon. Arthur and Ella Ahearn had two children. When his health deteriorated seriously in 1987 they moved to Georgetown, SC, US. He died in 1990. Examples of his work are listed here (1–5).

References

1. Hannay NB, Ahearn AJ. Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Solids. Anal Chem. 1954;26:1056–1058.

2. Ahearn AJ. Mass Spectrographic Analysis of Insulators Using a Vacuum Spark Positive Ion Source. J Appl Phys. 1961;32:1195–1197.

3. Ahearn AJ, ed. Mass Spectrometric Analysis of Solids. Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier; 1966.

4. Ahearn AJ, Trumbore FA, Frosch CJ, Luke CL, Malm DL. Spark Source Mass Spectrometric Measurements of Dopants of Known Concentrations in Gallium Phosphide. Anal Chem. 1967;39:350–352.

5. Ahearn AJ, ed. Trace Analysis by Mass Spectrometry. New York: Academic Press; 1972.

Claude Jean Allègre

Keith A. Nier,    Independent Historian, Madison, NJ, USA

b. 1937

Claude Allègre is a highly honored French geochemist/geophysicist/geologist who has also become a political figure (1). He was a cowinner of the Crafoord Prize (1986) and has received most of the other major awards in the earth and planetary sciences. He was the French Minister of Education, Research, and Technology in 1997–2000. He has been prominent in several public controversies. In addition to his research and his active role in the scientific community, he has written well-received books for nonspecialists that present a view of the development of this wide area of science and that put considerable emphasis on instrumentation, particularly mass spectrometry (2,3).

Claude Allègre was born in Paris in 1937 into an academic family; his mother was a school principal, his father a professor of natural science. He began his graduate scientific work in Paris under Louis Barrabé, professor of structural and applied geology in the Paris Faculty of Sciences, shortly before Barrabé died. After some years as an assistant in chemistry in the Faculties of Sciences of Reims and then Paris, in 1967 he founded the Laboratory of Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry at IPGP, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. He became professor at the University of Paris VII in 1970 and director of the IPGP in 1976. He also served as head of the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research and in various other governmental and political positions. He became professor emeritus in 2007.

Allègre's scientific career has centered on the use of mass spectrometry of greater and greater sensitivity and precision in expanding the scope and power of isotope geology to questions throughout the earth and planetary sciences. He and his students and colleagues have introduced or developed a significant number of techniques and approaches including radiogenic isotopic and trace element and stable isotopic studies of Pb, Xe, Ar, He, Os, Th, and particularly the revolutionary Sm-Nd (Samarium and Neodymium) method of dating and the study of Nd isotope systematics. He has maintained a fruitful competitive and cooperative interaction with the other main groups in these fields and promoted the spread of these methods to new centers. These techniques provide effective methods for investigating many aspects of our planet's interior and for revealing the effects it has on processes near, on, and above the Earth's surface (4–7).

Allègre's work has produced a better understanding of the natures of and complex interactions between the crust of the Earth and the different layers of its mantle. This has illuminated the changing rate and sources of continental formation over the Earth's history. His studies have produced evidence of very early degassing of part of the mantle and thus helped clarify the development of the atmosphere and ocean. He has generated sophisticated models of many geological processes and helped produce an overall geochemical perspective on geodynamics and on the comparative and interconnected histories of the various components of our solar system. Some notable publications are listed below (8–14).

In addition to the Crafoord Prize, Allègre's honors include membership in the Académie des Sciences, foreign membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London, and receipt of the Goldschmidt Medal (Geochemical Society of America), Wollaston Medal (Geological Society of London), Day Medal (Geological Society of America), Holmes Medal (European Union of Geosciences), and Bowie Medal (American Geophysical Union).

References

1. Allègre, C. Wikipédia. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_All%C3%A8gre.

2. Allègre C. The Behavior of the Earth: Continental and Seafloor Mobility. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press; 1988; Van Dam, D. K., Trans., French orig. 1983.

3. Allègre C. From Stone to Star: A View of Modern Geology. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press; 1992; Van Dam, D. K., Trans., French orig. 1985.

4. National Academy of Sciences, Member Directory, s.v. Allegre, Claude J, nas.nasonline.org/site/Dir/2071041173?pg=vprof&mbr=1001486&returl=http%3A%2F%2Fnas.nasonline.org%2Fsite%2FDir%2F2071041173%3Fpg%3Dsrch%26view%3Dbasic&retmk=search_again_link.

5. Wasserburg GJ. Isotopic Adventures-Geological, Planetological, and Cosmic. Annu Rev Earth Planet Sci. 2003;31:1–74.

6. The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, The Crafoord Prize, Crafoord Prize Press, 1986. www.crafoordprize.se/press/arkivpressreleases/thecrafoordprize1986.5.32d4db7210df50fec2d800016948.html.

7. Allègre, C. J. Isotope Geology. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, etc., 2008; French orig. 2005.

8. Allègre CJ. Méthode de discussion géochronologique concordia généralisée. Earth Planet Sci Lett. 1967;2:57–66.

9. Allègre CJ, Ben Othman D, Polvé M, Richard P. The Nd–Sr Isotopic Correlation in Mantle Materials and Geodynamic Consequences. Phys Earth Planet Int. 1979;19:293–306.

10. Allègre CJ, Brévard O, Dupré B, Minster FF. Isotopic and Chemical Effects Produced in a Continuously Differentiating Convecting Earth Mantle. Phil Trans Roy Soc Lond. 1980;297:447–477.

11. Allègre CJ. Chemical Geodynamics. Tectonophysics. 1982;81:109–132.

12. Allègre CJ, Turcotte D. Implications of a Two-Component Marble-Cake Mantle. Nature. 1985;323:123–127.

13. Allègre CJ, Hoffmann A, O'Nions RK. The Argon Constraints on Mantle Structure. Geophys Res Lett. 1996;23:3555–3557.

14. Allègre CJ, Moreira M. Rare Gas Systematics and the Origin of Oceanic Islands: The Key Role of Entrainment at the 670 km Boundary Layer. Earth Planet Sci Lett. 2004;228:85–92.

Francis William Aston

Kevin M. Downard,    University of Sydney, Australia

b. September 1, 1877

d. November 20, 1945

Francis William Aston was an accomplished physicist who built the first mass spectrographs in England the early 1900s (1–3). He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1922 for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole number rule (Fig. 1).

Figure 1 Francis William Aston ca. 1930s.

Aston was born in Harborne near Birmingham in 1877. Both his father William and mother Fanny Charlotte (nee Hollis) had connections with the metal industry; his father worked as a metal broker. Largely as a result of his mother's family wealth, Francis received a private school education. He attended the Harborne Vicarage School from 1889 and was enrolled at Malvern College in Worcestershire in 1891 where he boarded for two years. Here Aston demonstrated his abilities in mathematics and science. With his father's encouragement, Aston honed his experimental and fabrication skills in a home workshop in a stable, and later a disused loft, at the family property.

In 1894, Aston attended the Sir Josiah Mason Science College where he studied chemistry and physics under professors William Augustus Tilden, Percy Faraday Frankland, and John Henry Poynting. His training with Poynting was particularly influential and would ultimately lead to his appointment at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge as Joseph John Thomson's research assistant (1–7). Aston was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1898 and received a Forster scholarship to conduct research with Frankland on the optical rotation of a tartartic acid derivative that resulted in his first publication in 1901 (8). He was encouraged to study fermentation chemistry at a new School of Brewing at Birmingham that led to his employment years as a brewer's chemist at the W. Butler & Co. Springfield brewery in Wolverhampton for three years.

With Poynting's support, he returned to the then University of Birmingham in 1903 as an Associate. His research on electrical discharges in vacuum tubes enabled Aston to accurately measure the length of the chamber volume in what was described as cathode dark space and now bears his name (9). After extended world travel in 1908 with monies left to him upon the death of his father, Aston returned to Birmingham for a term before being recommended by Poynting to Sir J. J. Thomson for a research assistant position at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.

Thomson had been studying positive rays originating in evacuated discharge tubes from residual gases present (see this volume, Joseph John Thomson). The rays followed parabolic paths when deflected with crossed electric and magnetic fields as evident by their image on a fluorescent screen. His results with neon gas, gave rise to two parabolas that suggested either the existence of two forms of the element, one dubbed meta-neon, or that the second parabola resulted from neon hydride. Aston was charged with separating and examining the properties of the two forms of neon. He did so by measuring their density using a quartz microbalance specifically designed by him for that purpose. He showed that although the differences in their density were small, they were too large to be attributed to experimental error. Aston made a failed attempt to separate the constituents through their fractional distillation in charcoal cooled with liquid air and had limited success separating them by diffusion through pipeclay after repeated cycles. His greatest success in this endeavor, however, came after World War I during which he was stationed at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. His period at the RAE enabled Aston to consolidate his thoughts and he benefitted from his interactions with other noted scientists, among them Frederick Lindemann.

Aston realized that the approach with the best chance of success involved constructing an instrument using a sequence of electric and magnetic fields in which the constituents were separated by their mass. In 1919, on his return to Cambridge, Lindemann and Aston published on the possibility of separating isotopes of the elements by a range of approaches. Of them they wrote that "the positive ray method of electrical separation is the only one offering hopes of a pure product and that only in microscopic quantity" (10). Aston built his first mass spectrograph at the Cavendish laboratory, then directed by Ernest Rutherford, and successfully separated the forms of neon by mass with sufficient accuracy to prove that atmospheric neon is a mixture of two isotopes of atomic weight 20.00 and 22.00 correct to about 0.1% (11–13). The instrument quickly established the existence of isotopes of other elements including the alkali metals, nickel, chlorine and the other noble gases. His work resulted in the enunciation of the whole number rule in which all atoms have masses that are integer multiples of the mass of a hydrogen atom. His achievements, and their importance to our understanding of atoms and molecules, were recognized in 1922 with his award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (see this volume, Magnetic and Electrostatic Analyzers before 1960, Mass Spectrometry and the Separation and Enrichment of Isotopes, and A History of Mass Spectrometry in Nuclear