Professor K.R. Jennings—Aston Medallist 1998

Abstract

The British Mass Spectrometry Society (BMSS) have awarded the Aston Medal for 1998 to Keith to mark his many contributions to mass spectrometry. Keith worked with Professor J.W. Linnett in his post graduate days in Oxford on the reactions of atoms and small molecules using spectroscopic methods. Having completed his D.Phil. he was awarded a National Research Council Fellowship to work with Dr R.J. Cvetanovic on the mercury sensitisation of butane and on the addition of hydrogen atoms to olefins. He returned to England in 1960 to a lectureship at the University of Sheffield and became interested in mass spectrometry. His background in the kinetics of the reactions of small molecules was to form an admirable basis for the mass spectroscopic studies he was to undertake. He was appointed Reader in 1969. Keith’s first mass spectrometer was a modest one—an AEI MS10. However, it sufficed to interest him in metastable ions—a study which was to occupy him for many years. His first achievement in this area was to show that the [CH3] + ions produced from doubly charged benzene ions involved a release of 2.7 eV. Beynon, Saunders and Williams had shown how by measuring the peak width with an MS9, the energy release could be estimated. In 1964 Keith acquired an MS9 and using a modification of their method was able to show that his interpretation of the decomposition of doubly charged benzene ions was correct. His interest in ion–molecule reactions led to a thorough investigation of collision induced decomposition (CID). Keith came to the important conclusion that “structural inferences normally drawn from electron ionisation spectra could also be drawn from CID spectra”. Keith was appointed to the Chair of Physical Chemistry in the University of Warwick in 1972. In the early seventies he became the first person to operate an ion cyclotron spectrometer (ICR), which he used to very good effect in his investigations of ion–molecule reactions. In 1995 he was one of the recipients of a grant to acquire a high field Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance mass spectrometer. Other interests included negative ion mass spectrometry and the location of double bonds in unsaturated compounds. In the early 1980s, Keith became interested in large biological molecules. In 1987 a grant was awarded to a number of investigators for the purchase of the first four sector instrument which was installed in 1989 and enabled the study of peptides of RMM 2500 and above. It was used among other things to study the effect of collision gas upon the CID of ions. In 1994 a grant for the purchase of a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer was obtained, and used with good effect in the study of polymers and biomolecules.