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John Fenn
Winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Engineering Alumni Reunion Lecture

  
             
                                     
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(click on the picture to visit the Nobel Prize website where you can view John Fenn's Nobel Lecture and read his banquet speech)
Yale Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering, John Fenn receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from King Carl Gustaf of Sweden, Monday, December 10, 2002.
 

John Fenn lectured at the Alumni Reunion October 18-22, 2002 about the development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules; research he did at Yale, for which he received the nobel prize.

    
   
  John Fenn     John Fenn     John Fenn  
   
                                   
   

Fenn, a former professor of chemical engineering at Yale, shared the prize in chemistry with Koichi Tanaka of Japan and Kurt Wuethrich of Switzerland. The three won the prize for advances in the analytical chemistry of proteins and other large biological molecules.

In its citation, the Swedish Academy of Science notes: "The possibility of analyzing proteins in detail has led to increased understanding of the processes of life. ... The methods have revolutionized the development of new pharmaceuticals. Promising applications are also being reported in other areas, for example foodstuff control and early diagnosis of breast cancer and prostate cancer."

Working independently, Fenn and Tanaka devised different ways to apply mass spectrometry, which is a technique used to identify chemicals by weighing individual atoms and molecules. Fenn's method is called electrospray ionization (ESI), and produces charged droplets of protein solutions. Tanaka's method uses a laser pulse to desorb proteins from solution.

"This is truly an honor for Yale Engineering and the Chemical Engineering department," says Dean of Engineering Paul Fleury. "Fenn did his pioneering research on electrospray onization while at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Yale. It may be the first time that work done in an engineering department has been recognized with a Nobel Prize."

"During the Sesquicentennial Year of Yale Engineering, we have had the unique good fortune to have our faculty honored with two elected to the National Academy of Sciences, another receiving the National Medal of Technology from President Bush and now a fourth receiving the Nobel Prize," said Fleury. "No other program in the country has been so fortunate."

(Excerpt from the Yale Bulletin and Calendar, October 2002)

    
                                   
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