John Bennett Fenn (June 15, 1917 – December 10, 2010) was an American professor of analytical chemistry who was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. Fenn shared half of the award with Koichi Tanaka for their work in mass spectrometry. The other half of the 2002 award went to Kurt Wüthrich. Fenn's contributions specifically related to the development of electrospray ionization, now a commonly used technique for large molecules and routine liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Early in his career, Fenn did research in the field of jet propulsion at Project SQUID, and focused on molecular beam studies. Fenn finished his career with more than 100 publications, including one book.
Fenn was born in New York City, and moved to Kentucky with his family during the Great Depression. Fenn did his undergraduate work at Berea College, and received his PhD from Yale. He worked in industry at Monsanto and at private research labs before moving to academic posts including Yale and Virginia Commonwealth University.[2][3]
Fenn's research into electrospray ionization found him at the center of a legal dispute with Yale University. He lost the lawsuit, after it was determined that he misled the university about the potential usefulness of the technology. Yale was awarded $500,000 in legal fees and $545,000 in damages. The decision pleased the university, but provoked mixed responses from some people affiliated with the institution, who were disappointed with the treatment of a Nobel Prize winner with such a long history at the school.
Early life and education
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]
Research career and academic posts
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]
Research interests
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]
Lawsuit
Fenn's work with electrospray ionization was at the center of a lawsuit pitting him against his alma mater and former employer, Yale University. His initial dispute with the university began in 1987, when he turned 70 – Yale's mandatory retirement age.[7] Per university policy, Fenn was made an emeritus professor, which resulted in a reduction to his lab space.[8] Emeritus professors at Yale are still provided with an office, but cannot conduct their own research, nor manage their own labs.[14] In 1989, when Yale University inquired about the progress and potential about his electrospray work, he downplayed its potential scientific and commercial value.[7] Fenn believed he had the rights to the invention under the Bayh–Dole Act.[15] Fenn patented the technology on his own, and sold licensing rights to a company he partly owned – Analytica of Branford. In 1993, a private company seeking to license the use of electrospray technology traced its invention to Yale, when the university discovered that Fenn held the patent.[7][15] Yale's policy regarding patents generated by faculty or students requires that a percentage of any royalties generated from the patent are used by the university to fund future research. They do not claim the rights to patents that are produced away from university facilities or not related to the researcher's "designated activities."[15] Fenn claimed that he owned the technology because the work was completed after he had been forced to downsize at the university's mandatory retirement age.[15]
Yale University entered into its own licensing agreement with a private company, leading Fenn to file a lawsuit against the school in 1996. Yale countersued, requesting damages and reassignment of the patent.[15] The two parties did not reach an out of court settlement, despite repeated attempts at mediation. In 2005, U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney ruled against Fenn, awarding Yale $545,000 in royalties and $500,000 in legal fees.[7] Judge Droney was critical of Fenn, saying "Dr. Fenn only obtained the patent through fraud, civil theft, and breach of fiduciary duty."[15] Evidence presented in the case indicated that Fenn had served on panels at Yale University that reviewed the institution's policy on intellectual property.[7]
A spokesperson for Yale said, "We are pleased by the result in this case and, in particular, by the court's vindication of the Yale patent policy."[7] The ruling, and Yale's response produced a mixed reaction from some of Fenn's colleagues and former students, who wrote a letter to the Yale Daily News stating, "'Vindicating the Yale patent policy' is a poor excuse for treating a Nobel Laureate with a 68-year association with and dedicated service to the University, in such a contemptible manner."[16]
Awards and honors
Nobel Prize
Fenn shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Koichi Tanaka and Kurt Wüthrich "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules."[17] Fenn and Tanaka split half of the award for their work in developing ionization techniques for using mass spectrometry to analyze large biological molecules. Wüthrich was honored for his work in developing nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to analyze similar molecules in solution.[17] Fenn was honored largely for his contributions to the development of electrospray ionization, which made the analysis of large molecules by mass spectrometry feasible.[6] Fenn's Nobel lecture after being presented with the award was entitled "Electrospray Wings for Molecular Elephants."[18] He was surprised by his selection as a Nobel winner, saying "It's like winning the lottery, I'm still in shock."[10] At the time of his award, Fenn was working at Virginia Commonwealth University.[6]
Other awards
Fenn received his Nobel Prize fairly late in his career. Prior to being honored by the Nobel Foundation, Fenn had received numerous other awards. Early in his career, Fenn's research was focused on molecular beams, leading him to be named an honorary president of the Sixth International Symposium on Molecular Beams in 1977, and the first fellow of the International Molecular Beam Symposium in 1985.[6] In 1982, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation presented him with their U.S. Senior Scientist Award.[6]
Fenn's work in mass spectrometry earned him another spate of awards later in his career. In 1992, the American Society for Mass Spectrometry presented him with their Award for Distinguished Contributions in Mass Spectrometry. The International Society of Mass Spectrometry honored him with the Thomson Medal in 2000, and in the same year the American Chemical Society presented him with the Award for Advancements in Chemical Instrumentation. He was awarded the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities Award for outstanding contributions to Biomolecular Technologies in 2002. In 2003, Fenn was honored by his alma mater with the Wilbur Cross Medal, the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association's highest honor.[6]
Fenn maintained numerous professional affiliations, including membership in the American Chemical Society, the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, Sigma Chi, the American Association of University Professors and the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America. In 2000, Fenn was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2003 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.[6]
Personal life
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]
References
Robinson, Carol V. (2011). "John Fenn (1917–2010) Chemist who enabled mass spectrometry to weigh up biology". Nature. 469 (7330): 300. doi:10.1038/469300a. PMID 21248828.
Papers of John B. Fenn, 1948–2010 (bulk 1970–1990). Archived from the original on March 29, 2019. Retrieved March 23, 2018. "Click on 'Fenn Papers Finding Aid 2014' for finding aid to archive." {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
Fenn, John B. (October 1996). "RESEARCH IN RETROSPECT:Some Biograffiti of a Journeyman Chemist". Annual Review of Physical Chemistry. 47 (1): 1–41. doi:10.1146/annurev.physchem.47.1.1. ISSN 0066-426X. PMID 18290758.
"John B. Fenn – Autobiography". The Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on December 21, 2010. Retrieved April 2, 2011.
"Chemist with Kentucky roots wins Nobel". The Courier-Journal. Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press. October 10, 2002. p. 4. Archived from the original on April 17, 2019. Retrieved March 12, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. open access
"In Memoriam: John B. Fenn". Yale Daily Bulletin. December 15, 2010. Archived from the original on August 14, 2011. Retrieved April 5, 2011.
Moran, Kate (2005). "Nobelist loses to Yale in lawsuit". Yale Alumni Magazine. Archived from the original on December 2, 2010. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
Wynne, Kenneth J. (April 2, 2011). "John Fenn". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 7, 2019. Retrieved December 14, 2016.
Lotstein, Joshua (December 21, 2002). "Nobel winner Fenn still going strong". Yale Daily News. Archived from the original on September 25, 2012. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
"For Nobelist educated at Yale, "It's like winning the lottery"". Yale Medicine. Archived from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved April 5, 2011.
"Electrospray Ionization". School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Archived from the original on October 9, 2011. Retrieved April 5, 2011.
Fenn, John B. (2003). Engines, Energy, and Entropy: A Thermodynamics Primer (2nd ed.). Global View Publishing.
"Objects". Science History Institute. May 31, 2016. Archived from the original on March 28, 2018. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
Tamarkin, Frank J. (October 21, 2002). "Chemistry Nobel Prize winner's departure from Yale deserves more clarification". Yale Daily News. Archived from the original on September 25, 2012. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
Poppick, Susie (February 14, 2005). "Former prof loses ruling over patent". Yale Daily News. Archived from the original on August 21, 2011. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
"Yale's patent lawsuit was terrible mistake". Yale Daily News. March 2, 2005. Archived from the original on September 25, 2012. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
"Press Release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2002". The Nobel Foundation. October 9, 2002. Archived from the original on December 14, 2010. Retrieved April 2, 2011.
"John B. Fenn Nobel Lecture". The Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved April 5, 2011.
Arnaud, Celia (December 13, 2010). "John Fenn Dies At 93". Chemical & Engineering News. Retrieved April 2, 2011.
External links
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 Edit this at Wikidata 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)
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Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1901–1925
1901: Jacobus van 't Hoff 1902: Emil Fischer 1903: Svante Arrhenius 1904: William Ramsay 1905: Adolf von Baeyer 1906: Henri Moissan 1907: Eduard Buchner 1908: Ernest Rutherford 1909: Wilhelm Ostwald 1910: Otto Wallach 1911: Marie Curie 1912: Victor Grignard / Paul Sabatier 1913: Alfred Werner 1914: Theodore Richards 1915: Richard Willstätter 1916 1917 1918: Fritz Haber 1919 1920: Walther Nernst 1921: Frederick Soddy 1922: Francis Aston 1923: Fritz Pregl 1924 1925: Richard Zsigmondy
1926–1950
1926: Theodor Svedberg 1927: Heinrich Wieland 1928: Adolf Windaus 1929: Arthur Harden / Hans von Euler-Chelpin 1930: Hans Fischer 1931: Carl Bosch / Friedrich Bergius 1932: Irving Langmuir 1933 1934: Harold Urey 1935: Frédéric Joliot-Curie / Irène Joliot-Curie 1936: Peter Debye 1937: Norman Haworth / Paul Karrer 1938: Richard Kuhn 1939: Adolf Butenandt / Leopold Ružička 1940 1941 1942 1943: George de Hevesy 1944: Otto Hahn 1945: Artturi Virtanen 1946: James B. Sumner / John Northrop / Wendell Meredith Stanley 1947: Robert Robinson 1948: Arne Tiselius 1949: William Giauque 1950: Otto Diels / Kurt Alder
1951–1975
1951: Edwin McMillan / Glenn T. Seaborg 1952: Archer Martin / Richard Synge 1953: Hermann Staudinger 1954: Linus Pauling 1955: Vincent du Vigneaud 1956: Cyril Hinshelwood / Nikolay Semyonov 1957: Alexander Todd 1958: Frederick Sanger 1959: Jaroslav Heyrovský 1960: Willard Libby 1961: Melvin Calvin 1962: Max Perutz / John Kendrew 1963: Karl Ziegler / Giulio Natta 1964: Dorothy Hodgkin 1965: Robert Woodward 1966: Robert S. Mulliken 1967: Manfred Eigen / Ronald Norrish / George Porter 1968: Lars Onsager 1969: Derek Barton / Odd Hassel 1970: Luis Federico Leloir 1971: Gerhard Herzberg 1972: Christian B. Anfinsen / Stanford Moore / William Stein 1973: Ernst Otto Fischer / Geoffrey Wilkinson 1974: Paul Flory 1975: John Cornforth / Vladimir Prelog
1976–2000
1976: William Lipscomb 1977: Ilya Prigogine 1978: Peter D. Mitchell 1979: Herbert C. Brown / Georg Wittig 1980: Paul Berg / Walter Gilbert / Frederick Sanger 1981: Kenichi Fukui / Roald Hoffmann 1982: Aaron Klug 1983: Henry Taube 1984: Robert Merrifield 1985: Herbert A. Hauptman / Jerome Karle 1986: Dudley R. Herschbach / Yuan T. Lee / John Polanyi 1987: Donald J. Cram / Jean-Marie Lehn / Charles J. Pedersen 1988: Johann Deisenhofer / Robert Huber / Hartmut Michel 1989: Sidney Altman / Thomas Cech 1990: Elias Corey 1991: Richard R. Ernst 1992: Rudolph A. Marcus 1993: Kary Mullis / Michael Smith 1994: George Olah 1995: Paul J. Crutzen / Mario Molina / F. Sherwood Rowland 1996: Robert Curl / Harold Kroto / Richard Smalley 1997: Paul D. Boyer / John E. Walker / Jens Christian Skou 1998: Walter Kohn / John Pople 1999: Ahmed Zewail 2000: Alan J. Heeger / Alan MacDiarmid / Hideki Shirakawa
2001–present
2001: William Knowles / Ryoji Noyori / K. Barry Sharpless 2002: John B. Fenn / Koichi Tanaka / Kurt Wüthrich 2003: Peter Agre / Roderick MacKinnon 2004: Aaron Ciechanover / Avram Hershko / Irwin Rose 2005: Robert H. Grubbs / Richard R. Schrock / Yves Chauvin 2006: Roger D. Kornberg 2007: Gerhard Ertl 2008: Osamu Shimomura / Martin Chalfie / Roger Y. Tsien 2009: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan / Thomas A. Steitz / Ada E. Yonath 2010: Richard F. Heck / Akira Suzuki / Ei-ichi Negishi 2011: Dan Shechtman 2012: Robert Lefkowitz / Brian Kobilka 2013: Martin Karplus / Michael Levitt / Arieh Warshel 2014: Eric Betzig / Stefan Hell / William E. Moerner 2015: Tomas Lindahl / Paul L. Modrich / Aziz Sancar 2016: Jean-Pierre Sauvage / Fraser Stoddart / Ben Feringa 2017: Jacques Dubochet / Joachim Frank / Richard Henderson 2018: Frances Arnold / Gregory Winter / George Smith 2019: John B. Goodenough / M. Stanley Whittingham / Akira Yoshino 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier / Jennifer Doudna 2021: David MacMillan / Benjamin List 2022: Carolyn R. Bertozzi / Morten P. Meldal / Karl Barry Sharpless 2023: Moungi G. Bawendi / Louis E. Brus / Alexei I. Ekimov
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