Fred W. McLafferty

Fred W. McLafferty's oral history begins with a discussion of his family's history of education and his early life in Nebraska during the Great Depression. Sparked by a high schoolchemistry class, McLafferty decided to pursue the subject at the University of Nebraska. Because his undergraduate career coincided with World War II, McLafferty entered an accelerated degree program and enlisted in the war. After months of combat, he returned for graduate work at Nebraska, where he earned his Master's degree and published papers as an analytical chemist. After moving to Cornell University to pursue his doctorate degree, his interest shifted to organic chemistry and his work on organofluorine compounds began. In 1950, after completing his degree, McLafferty entered industry at the Dow Chemical Company in Michigan, where he was introduced to mass spectrometry. There, McLafferty and Roland Gohlke helped develop instrumentation and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. After several years, McLafferty was sent by Dow to Boston, Massachusetts to direct its new research lab. There he worked on patents and the McLafferty rearrangements in mass spectracorrelations and utilized time-of-flight. In his oral history, McLafferty speaks often of the community and meetings of mass spectrometrists, and how he has collaborated and interacted with this community in the past fifty years. In 1964 he left Dow for an academic position at Purdue University, where he created a new research program. He continued his collaboration with Gohlke and also started collaborating with Klaus Biemann on topics such as collisional activation and gas chromatography. While at Purdue, McLafferty consulted for companies like Dow and Hitachi, and began securing grant money for research. After four years at Purdue University, he became Peter J. W. Debye Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. McLafferty discusses his longtime position at Cornell University, which has allowed him both to publish landmark works and to develop techniques like electron capture dissociation and top down proteomics, and his most recent research work, which has included published papers on the use of ammonium tartrate and succinate in electrospray solution. McLafferty concludes his interview by discussing his impressions and remembrances of his long list of peers.

University of Iowa

1950 - 1950 Post-Doctorate under Ralph Shriner

Dow Chemical Company

1950 - 1956 In charge of mass spectrometry and gas chromatography

Dow Chemical Company

1956 - 1964 First Director of Eastern Research Laboratory, Basic Research

Purdue University

1964 - 1968 Professor of Chemistry

Cornell University

1968 - Present Peter J. W. Debye Professor of Chemistry (Emeritus)

Michael A. Grayson

Michael A. Grayson is a member of the Mass Spectrometry Research Resource at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his B.S. degree in physics from St. Louis University in 1963 and his M.S. in physics from the University of Missouri at Rolla in 1965. He is the author of over 45 papers in the scientific literature. Before joining the Research Resource, he was a staff scientist at McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratory. While completing his undergraduate and graduate education, he worked at Monsanto Company in St. Louis, where he learned the art and science of mass spectrometry. Grayson is a member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), and has served many different positions within that organization. He has served on the Board of Trustees of CHF and is currently a member of CHF's Heritage Council. He currently pursues his interest in the history of mass spectrometry by recording oral histories, assisting in the collection of papers, and researching the early history of the field.