Prof John Fenn : The person who opened the technique in Chemist's tool box for Biologists.....
Prof John Fenn was born in New York City in 1917. He moved with his family to Berea, Ky., as a teen. He attended Berea College, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1937. He earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Yale in 1940.
After his graduation, he worked in industry, with stints at Monsanto in Anniston, Ala.; Sharples Chemicals in Wyandotte, Mich.; and Experiment Inc., a small company in Richmond.
In 1952, he moved to Princeton University as the director of the Navy-funded Project SQUID to sponsor pure and applied research related to jet propulsion. On the other hand he served as a professor of mechanical engineering from 1959 to 1963 and of aerospace sciences from 1963 to 1966.
Fenn did the work for which he received the Nobel Prize while at Yale University, where he was a professor of applied science and chemistry from 1967 to 1980.Fenn produced his breakthrough in the late 1980s by transforming an analysis technique called mass spectrometry, which helps reveal the mass and charge of particles. The technique had long been part of the chemists’ toolbox, but was not effective with large and complex molecules – such as proteins, peptides and DNA.
He was the professor of chemical engineering from 1981 until his retirement in 1987.Fenn published his research in 1988, shortly after being forced to retire from Yale University because he had reached 70. He had stayed on as a professor emeritus, but was not allowed to use graduate students to help with his research, and was downsized to a smaller office. Subsequently he moved to Virginia Commonwealth University in 1994 because the school furnished him with a laboratory.
In 1992, Fenn received the Award for Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. He was a member of the American Chemical Society for 69 years. After Fenn left Yale, the university discovered that he had filed a personal patent for the technique, contrary to the university’s policy, and, in 1991, had licensed the patent to a company he had co-founded with a graduate student. John Fenn’s wife, Margaret, died in 1992.
Prof Fenn shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work that aided the mass spectrometric analysis of proteins and other large biological molecules. He shared the Nobel prize with Japanese scientist Koichi Tanaka and Kurt Wuthrich of Switzerland.In 2005, Fenn lost a dispute with Yale over the patent rights to electrospray MS, according to the New York Times.
In an interview published in the Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry, Dr. Fenn expounded on his views about chemistry education."Courses ought to be fun," he said. "I don't care whether we cover everything in the periodic table or not. . . . There's no fun any more!"I wish we could somehow get it across that the purpose of education is to develop young peoples' minds, not fill them up with a lot of facts," he said. "Teach them how to think."
Prof John Fenn- Nobel soul passed away on Dec10 2010
SARAVANAN KUMAR சரவணன் குமார்
Research Associate, Senior R&D Executive,
Proteomics Facility,PTG, Bruker Daltonics India pvt ltd,
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology,
New Delhi, India
