The discovery of mass spectrometry

The award of the 1922 Nobel chemistry prize to Francis Aston may have surprised some of his contemporaries, as his most significant research was in an area generally regarded as a branch of physics. Yet with a century’s worth of hindsight, the decision seems appropriate. Aston’s work was to have a substantial impact on the next hundred years of chemistry.

Aston went from a small village outside Birmingham to Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, working with J J Thomson. It was there that his experimental skills meant he developed what was to become the mass spectrometer used in labs across the world today.