1989 Seaborg Award: Ronald D. Macfarlane

Award Statement C&EN (Pages 2-3)

Macfarlane received a B.S. from the University of Buffalo in 1954, and M.S. (1957) and Ph.D. (1959) degrees from Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Macfarlane along with fellow postdoc Roger Griffioen discovered a new method for the analysis of short-lived radioactive species—the helium jet recoil transport method—which Macfarlane and his coworkers have used, over the years, to discover and characterize close to 50 short-lived radioactive nuclides.

In 1974, Macfarlane and Torgerson (co-worker) unexpectedly stumbled on a phenomenon that led to the solution of a long-standing problem in the field of biomedical mass spectrometry: how to form gas phase molecular ions of involatile, thermally unstable species. The subsequent developments of related particle-induced desorption methods—organic SIMS, laser desorption, and fast-atom bombardment mass spectrometry—according to their originators, were influenced by the pioneering studies of the Macfarlane group.

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