FT-ICR. The Key to Unlocking Nature’s Isotopic Zoo

View FT-ICR. The Key to Unlocking Nature’s Isotopic Zoo

Presenter: Alan Marshall

Published: February 2010

Age: 14-19 and upwards

Views: 1933 views

Tags: mass

Type: Lectures

Source/institution: FSU


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Alan G. Marshall, Florida State University’s 2006-2007 Lawton Professor, will speak on ‘Reading Chemical ‘Fine Print’: The Key to Unlocking Nature’s Isotopic Zoo’ as he delivers the Tenth Annual Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Lecture.’Nature has built an intrinsic ‘code’ into every molecule that identifies the number and kinds of chemical elements of which it is composed,’ Marshall, FSU’s Kasha Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said in describing this lecture. ‘The code is simply the mass of the molecule, but reading it requires ultra-accurate measurement. He discusses how reading the code can help to identify chemical and biochemical ‘markers’ in complex chemical mixtures ranging from biological fluids to petroleum crude oil.’nMarshall is widely known throughout the world’s scientific community as the co-inventor of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometry, one of the most informative methods available for chemical analysis. The technique, which allows researchers to simultaneously separate and identify more than 10,000 separate chemical constituents within a single sample, has had a tremendous impact on research in areas as diverse as biomedicine, chemistry and petroleum analysis.nThe Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor award is the highest honor that FSU faculty can bestow on a colleague.