John B. Fenn, Nobel Winner Who Studied Large Molecules, Dies at 93
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: December 12, 2010
John B. Fenn, who shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for chemistry for developing a technique that sped up the development of new drugs and the study of the molecules of life, died Friday in Richmond, Va. He was 93.
Virginia Commonwealth University
John B. Fenn in his lab at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2002.
Get Science News From The New York Times »A spokeswoman for Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where Dr. Fenn was a professor of chemistry, confirmed Dr. Fenn’s death but did not provide information about its cause or his survivors.
Dr. Fenn was in his 70s when he published the research that won the Nobel Prize, focusing on a new way to identify and map proteins, carbohydrates, DNA and other large biological molecules. He shared the prize with Koichi Tanaka, an engineer in Kyoto, Japan, and Kurt Wüthrich, a professor of biophysics in Zurich, who worked independently on related protein research.
Dr. Fenn improved a technique known as mass spectrometry, which identifies molecules like proteins by how quickly they are accelerated in an electric field. Using his approach, biologists can now identify molecules in a matter of seconds rather than weeks, speeding up research on new drugs.
The techniques have helped create a new field of biology, proteomics, in which scientists are trying to catalog the interplay of hundreds of thousands of proteins in human cells.
“The possibility of analyzing proteins in detail has led to increased understanding of the processes of life,” the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences said in its citation for the 2002 prize.
The problem that had stymied biologists in using mass spectrometry on larger proteins is that such proteins clump together, and thus the scientists would end up measuring the clumps rather than individual proteins.
Dr. Fenn’s breakthrough was to turn a solution containing the proteins into vapor.
In this technique, called electrospray ionization, a strong electric field dispersed charged droplets. As a droplet evaporates, it explodes into smaller droplets; the smaller droplets explode into yet smaller ones until they each contain a singled charged protein hovering in the vapor.
With the proteins separated, scientists could then employ the usual technique of mass spectrometry, applying an electric field to accelerate the molecules and measure their mass.
“We learned to make elephants fly,” Dr. Fenn said in an interview after the announcement of the Nobel. “There’s an awful lot of luck in this,” he added. “In fact, there’s a lot of luck in science.”
Dr. Fenn and Yale battled over the patent rights to electrospray ionization after — contrary to the university’s policy — Dr. Fenn personally patented it and then licensed the patent to a company he had co-founded. A federal judge ruled in 2005 that Dr. Fenn was guilty of “civil theft,” assigned the patent to Yale and ordered Dr. Fenn to pay Yale more than $1 million. He appealed the ruling but lost.
Born June 15, 1917, in New York City, John Bennett Fenn received his undergraduate degree from Berea College in Kentucky in 1937 and his doctorate from Yale in 1940.
He worked at the Monsanto Chemical Company in Anniston, Ala., and Sharples Chemical in Michigan and spent seven years with a small Richmond company, Experiment Inc., that worked on combustion engines.
In 1959, he was named director of Project Squid, a United States Navy research program in jet propulsion, which was administered by Princeton. Dr. Fenn became a professor of aerospace and mechanical sciences at the university.
He moved to Yale in 1967, retiring in 1987 as an emeritus professor. Dr. Fenn moved to Virginia Commonwealth in 1994.
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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