Perspectives and Retrospectives in Mass Spectrometry: One View

Mass spectrometry benefits from a flexible definition which equates it with many aspects of the science of matter in the ionized state. The field continues to expand rapidly, not only to encompass larger and more complex molecules through more powerful instruments, but simultaneously towards in-situ measurements made using smaller, more flexible and just-sufficiently-powerful instruments. The senior author has been fortunate to work in mass spectrometry from 1967 to the present and has been involved in a wide range of efforts which have covered analytical, biological, organic, instrumental and physical aspects of the subject. This effort has been made in the company of a remarkable set of colleagues. From this vantage, it is possible to look both backwards and forwards in this prospective and retrospective piece. This presentation involves a personal look at places, people, instruments and concepts engaged in along a path through Mass Spectrometry. The journey goes from Natal, South Africa, via Cambridge, UK, through Kansas and on to Purdue University, in the great state of Indiana. It starts with natural products chemistry and moves to the physical chemistry of fragmentation and energy partitioning on to complex mixture analysis by tandem mass spectrometry and, hence, to the concepts of thermochemical determination by the kinetic method, preparation of materials by ion soft landing, the possible role of amino acid clusters in the origin of homochiral life and the elaboration of a set of ambient ionization methods for chemical analysis performed using samples in their native state. Special attention is given to novel concepts and instrumentation and to the emerging areas of ambient ionization, molecular imaging and miniature mass spectrometers. Personal mass spectrometers appear to be just over the horizon as is the large-scale use of mass spectrometry in field-based analysis, including point-of-care medical diagnostics.