michael l gross born 1940 is professor of chemistry medicine and immunology at washington university in st louis he was formerly professor of chemistry at the university of nebraskalincoln from 19681994he is recognized for his contributions to the field of mass spectrometry and ion chemistry he is credited with the discovery of distonic ions chemical species containing a radical and an ionic site on different atoms of the same moleculeworking with colleagues at the environmental protection agency he validated the partpertrillion analysis of 2378tetrachlorodibenzodioxin in biological tissues perhaps the first validation of an ultratrace analytical chemistry method with this method he and his coworkers found this highly toxic compound in the tissue of veterans of the vietnam war a controversial observation that was later validated by scientists at the center for disease control in the early 1980s he served as chief analytical chemistry witness before the environmental protection agency of the united states of america 245t and silvex cancellation hearing in re the dow chemical company et al fifra docket nos 415in 1978 he became director of a national science foundation center for mass spectrometry at nebraska under the aegis of the nsf he commissioned the first commercial triple sector tandem mass spectrometer with this instrumentation his coworkers and he sequenced the first unknown peptide using soft ionization and tandem mass spectrometry msms they also discovered a new class of fragmentation of gasphase ions later termed chargeremote fragmentation and applied it to a wide variety of compounds including fatty acids lipids surfactants steroids and peptides an expanded foursector version was employed to insert noble gas atoms in c60 and other fullerenes and a second noble gas atom in synthetic fullerenes already containing a noble gas atomin the late 1970s charles wilkins and he built the second fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer and were the first to use it for analytical applications notable were the demonstrations of gcms laser desorption gas pulsing multiphoton ionization and the development of calibration law for accurate mass measurement more recently don rempel and he described an electrically compensated fticr trap to improve mass resolving power