John Herbert Beynon. 29 December 1923—24 August 2015

Abstract

John Herbert Beynon was born in a Welsh mining village in 1923, graduated BSc (Hons, physics) at 19, then worked on weapons research for the war effort in World War Two. In 1947 he started a 22-year career at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in Manchester, where, with his technician Albert Williams, he revolutionized mass spectrometry from a physics method to an essential technique for organic chemistry. In 1960 he completed his landmark book Mass spectrometry and its applications to organic chemistry , which was reprinted by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry as a ‘Classic Book’. He continued his creative work in 1969–1974 at Purdue University. In 1974 he started his Royal Society Research Professorship at Swansea University, his alma mater. Collaborations here with a long string of students, postdoc, visiting professors and scientists from many countries resulted in about 65% of his list of 395 peer-reviewed publications. His unexpected retirement led to a compendium of 32 articles in his honour. He then initiated and edited a new journal, Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry .