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PEOPLE Analytical chemists win Nobel Prize Analytical Chemistry congratulates John Fenn of Virginia Commonwealth University and Koichi Tanaka of Shimadzu Corp. (Japan) for receiving the 2003 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The award recognizes “their development of soft desorption methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules,” according to a statement from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Fenn, 85, won for developing electrospray ionization (ESI) for MS and its applications. ESI gave researchers a rapid and accurate process for analyzing a wide range of polar molecules, such as peptides, proteins, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids. Fenn published the first case of combining ESI mass spectrometry in 1984; four years later, he and his colleagues were the first to apply the technique to protein analysis. Tanaka, 43, won for his work on matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) MS of proteins, which he and his colleagues presented at a conference in 1987 and published in 1988. The researchers used an ultrafine cobalt powder as the matrix. The cobalt particles absorb the laser radiation and efficiently transfer the heat to the surrounding large molecules of sample. The molecules are heated so quickly that they vaporize without decomposing. This technique is related to MALDI using organic matrixes, which was developed by Franz Hillenkamp of the University of Münster and Michael Karas of the University of Frankfurt (both in Germany) and published in 1988. Tanaka has stayed with Shimadzu throughout his career, most recently joining the Shimadzu Biotech division in Manchester (United Kingdom). His invention was commercialized by Shimadzu and its U.K. subsidiary, Kratos Analytical, which produces MALDI instruments. Fenn held professorships at several universities worldwide before settling at Yale University in 1967. He moved to Virginia Commonwealth University in 1993, where he is a research professor. Fenn was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
Fenn and Tanaka each received 25% of the Nobel Prize. The other half went to Kurt Wüthrich of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–Zürich and the Scripps Research Institute for the development of NMR spectroscopy to determine the 3-D structure of biological macromolecules in solution. a —Wilder D. Smith and Michael J. Felton
2003 DAC officers M. Bonner Denton of the University of Arizona is the new chair-elect of ACS’s Division of Analytical Chemistry (DAC). The elections retained John Richardson of Shippensburg University as division secretary and Carolyn Ribes of the Dow Chemical Co. as treasurer. Charles Wilkins of the University of Arkansas, Michelle Buchanan of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Roland Hirsch of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Sally Stafford of Hewlett Packard Co. will serve as councillors; Henry Blount of the National Science Foundation, Karen B. Sentell of Ciba Vision, and Thea Barbarakis of Bayer will serve as alternate councillors. David Pinkston of Procter & Gamble is 2003–04 DAC chair.
Walter C. McCrone (1916–2002)
Walter C. McCrone, 86, a pioneer in the science of chemical microscopy, died on July 10, in Chicago, Ill. Considered the father of modern microscopy, he revolutionized the use and understanding of the light microscope for materials analysis, and he developed accessories, techniques, and methodologies to push the state of the art. McCrone attended Cornell University, where he completed his undergraduate degree in chemistry in 1938 and his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1942. After two
postdoctoral years at Cornell, McCrone accepted a position as a chemist at Armour Research Foundation (now IITRI). In 1956, he became an independent consultant and later founded McCrone Associates, Inc., a materials-science facility for microscopy, crystallography, and ultramicroanalysis. In 1960, he founded McCrone Research Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to the teaching and research of light and electron microscopies, and later included a sister organization, McCrone Scientific in London. His contributions extended beyond the scientific world. In 1951, he joined the Board of Directors of Ada S. McKinley Community Services, Inc., a nonprofit human services organization, and served as board president from 1964 to 1995. He also served on the boards of VanderCook College of Music and the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies. McCrone was the editor and publisher of The Microscope, an international journal started by Arthur Barron in 1937 to cover new advances in microscope design, accessories, and techniques and unique applications in the study of particles, fibers, films, or surfaces of various materials. During his 60-year career, he published more than 600 technical papers and 16 books and chapters. The Particle Atlas, perhaps his best-known publication, appeared as a single volume in 1970 and as a six-volume second edition in 1973. He may be most famous for his work with the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978, for which he received the 2000 American Chemical Society Award in Analytical Chemistry. His other honors and awards include the 1970 Benedetti-Pichler award in microchemistry; the 1977 Ernst Abbe Award of the New York Microscopical Society; the 1981 Anachem Award of the Association of Analytical Chemists; the 1993 Public Affairs Award of the Chicago Section, the American Chemical Society; the 1999 Emile Chamot Award; and the 2002 August Köhler Award, awarded in June. a —Donald A. Brooks
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