Proteomics for biomedicine: a half-completed journey

Although I studied physics and identify peptides in sequence databases was made possible by the Danish mathematics until the master’s level, I always knew that I wanted to get into biology, whose golden age I was sure was happening in my lifetime. When the opportunity came knocking – in the shape of John Fenn, who was spending a sabbatical at the University of Göttingen – I did not hesitate to take up his offer to come with him to Yale for my PhD. John was working on a far-out idea: that one could ionize biomolecules by applying an electric field to the outlet of a needle through which a liquid was flowing. At first there was little interest in ‘electrospray’, but as soon as it became clear that large, intact proteins survive this process (Mann et al, 1989; Meng et al, 1988), the community was hooked. This included the Nobel Prize committee, who gave John a share of their prize for chemistry in 2002.