John B. Fenn

Fenn was born in New York City, and grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey. In the years preceding the Great Depression, Fenn's father worked several different jobs, including briefly working as a draftsman at the Fokker Aircraft Company. During this time, Charles Lindbergh's plane The Spirit of St. Louis was briefly stored at one of the company's hangars. Fenn recalled sitting in the cockpit as a ten-year-old, pretending to pilot the famous plane.[4] When his family's fortunes took a turn for the worse with the advent of the Depression, they moved to Berea, Kentucky, because his aunt Helen Dingman, who was on the faculty of Berea College, agreed to help the family.[5] Fenn completed his education at Berea College and Allied Schools, formally finishing his high school education at the age of 15, but he took extra classes for another year rather than start college at such a young age.[4] He earned his bachelor's degree from Berea College in his new hometown, with the assistance of summer classes in organic chemistry at the University of Iowa, and physical chemistry at Purdue.[4]

When Fenn was considering graduate school, he was advised to take additional mathematics courses by Henry Bent, then a chemistry professor at Harvard University. His undergraduate program in chemistry had required minimal math courses, and he had been excused from these due to high marks in his high school courses. Due to Bent's advice, Fenn added math classes to his schedule. Despite his future success, Fenn always felt that his lack of mathematical skills were a hindrance in his career.[4] After submitting several applications, Fenn received offers for teaching assistantships from Yale and Northwestern, and accepted the position at Yale.[4] Fenn did his graduate studies in physical chemistry under Gosta Akerlof.[4] He obtained his PhD in chemistry from Yale in 1940 and his thesis was 45 pages long, with only three pages of prose.[4]

After completing graduate school, Fenn's first job was with Monsanto, working in the Phosphate Division and producing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Fenn and his colleague James Mullen became disenchanted with the direction of work at Monsanto, and they resigned together in 1943.[4] Fenn worked briefly at a small company named Sharples Chemicals that focused on the production of amyl chloride derivatives.[4] In 1945, he joined Mullen at his new startup, Experiment, Inc, focusing on research and development. Fenn's first publication came in 1949 as a result of his work with Mullen. That this publication came ten years after he completed graduate school made Fenn somewhat of a rarity amongst academics.[4]

In 1952, Fenn moved to Princeton University as Director of Project SQUID, a program to support research related to jet propulsion that was funded by the Office of Naval Research.[4] During this period, Fenn started his work developing supersonic atomic and molecular beam sources, which are now widely used in chemical physics research. After working with Project SQUID, Fenn returned to Yale University in 1967. He held a joint appointment in the chemistry and engineering departments until 1987, conducting much of his research in Mason Laboratory.[6] In 1987, Fenn had reached Yale's mandatory retirement age. He became a professor emeritus, entitling him to office space at the university, but costing him most of his laboratory space and research assistants.[7]

After a dispute with Yale over his forced retirement and the rights to his invention of electrospray ionization, Fenn moved to Richmond, Virginia to join Virginia Commonwealth University's (VCU) department of chemistry as an analytical chemistry professor. VCU established an engineering department in the late 1990s, and Fenn held a joint professorship between the two departments until his death.[8] Even in his 80s, Fenn enjoyed the opportunity to be in the lab doing research, saying, "I like to mingle and exchange with the young people. It gets me out from underfoot at home."[9]

The instrument Fenn and his colleagues used to develop ESI is on display at the Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum in Philadelphia, PA

While Fenn was working with Monsanto, the company's research was focused on the production of phosphoric acid and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).[4] Fenn and his colleagues at Monsanto were largely unaware of the health hazards posed by PCBs, indeed because of their inertness, they "practically bathed in the stuff".[4] After spending several more years doing various industrial research, Fenn was looking to get back into the academic world. He had the opportunity to go to Princeton University, where he became the director of Project SQUID.[4]

Fenn did not start his Nobel-winning research until later in his career. He was semi-retired when he first published his research on electrospray ionization for mass spectrometry.[6] Fenn felt that his work in electrospray ionization received "a kick in the pants" when proteomics emerged.[10] In 2001, more than 1700 papers on proteomics were published, many using electrospray ionization.[9] Electrospray ionization provides a way to get accurate information about the mass of a large molecule very quickly, even when it is in a mixture of other molecules.[10] The liquid sample is introduced into an electrospray source (at atmospheric pressure) and desolvated with a flow of heated nitrogen gas. This forms small droplets which evaporate in a region under vacuum, which increases the charge on the droplets.[11] For large molecules like proteins, this often results in multiply charge species. Increasing the charge on the molecules, decreased the mass-to-charge ratio, which allows the mass to be more easily determined.[11]

Despite getting a late start in publishing his research (he did not publish a paper until 10 years after finishing graduate school), Fenn had over 100 publications at the time of his death.[6] He also wrote a book, entitled Engines, Energy, and Entropy: A Thermodynamics Primer.[12] The Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum in Philadelphia, PA has the instrument Fenn and his graduate students built while they were developing electrospray ionization on display, after receiving it as a gift from Fenn.[13]

Fenn married Margaret Wilson at the end of his second year of graduate studies.[4] Together, they had three children – two daughters and a son.[8] Margaret was killed in a car accident in New Zealand in 1992.[4] Fenn remarried, his second wife was named Frederica Mullen.[8] He died in Richmond, Virginia on December 10, 2010, at the age of 93,[6] exactly 8 years to the day after receiving his Nobel Prize. Fenn was survived by Frederica, his three children, seven grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren: Anika Fenn Gilman, Nora Fenn Gilman, Dominick Brown, Aaron Holloway, Michelle Holloway, Damarion Holloway, Tyrell Holloway, Eloise Whittington, JC Leslie, Manon Leslie, and Dino Steinberg.[19]

• Papers of John B. Fenn, 1948–2010 (bulk 1970–1990). Click on 'Fenn Papers Finding Aid 2014' for finding aid to archive. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
• Interview where John Fenn discusses the history of the development of the Electrospray Ionization method
• Annual Reviews Conversations Interview with John B. Fenn (video)
• John B. Fenn on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture December 8, 2002 Electrospray Wings for Molecular Elephants
• Dudley R. Herschbach and Charles E. Kolb, "John B. Fenn", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2014)