More Nobel success

Spectroscopy has again featured in the Nobel Prize lists with the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Paul C. Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging.

MS award

Dr Michisato Toyoda of the Department of Physics at Osaka University, Japan, has received the 2003 Curt Brunnée Award sponsored by Thermo Electron. The award recognises the contributions of a researcher under 45 toward the development of mass spectrometry instrumentation. Dr Toyoda demonstrated that mass resolution is proportional to flight length (number of turns in a time-of-flight instrument) and achieved a record resolution of 350,000 after 500 turns, or 600 metres.

Femtoscience

A new £2 million Research Centre at the University of York, the York Centre for Laser Spectroscopy and Photochemistry, was opened on 29 October 2003 by the University’s Chancellor, Dame Janet Baker. A number of eminent scientists from around the world attended the opening. The centre is led by Professor Klaus Muller-Dethlefs, and has two new high-power Spitfire femtosecond/picosecond regenerative amplifiers which are used to obtain tunable ultra-short laser pulses in the visible, ultraviolet and infrared regions.

ERM Initiative

Europe’s major certified reference materials (CRM) producers, LGC, IRMM and BAM, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the European Reference Material (ERM) Initiative. This recognises that it is in the public’s interest to create a reliable European chemical measurement system and that there is also a need to increase the support of European legislation and trade with high-quality CRMs. The initiative is expected to expand as the number of signatories increases; it will seek to integrate other European CRM producers that prepare, certify and handle CRMs according to ISO Guides 34 and 35 and that are also signatories or designated laboratories of the CIPM Mutual Recognition Arrangement. www.erm-crm.org.