The Thomson Medal Award is named after Sir JJ Thomson, who was responsible for the first mass spectrograph and its resulting data more than 100 years ago. He also predicted many features of modern mass spectrometry. He discovered the electron using mass spectrometry and won the Nobel Prize in 1906 for his research.
The International Mass Spectrometry Foundation has announced that the 2024 Thomson Medal will be awarded to Dr Richard A Yost “for outstanding achievements in and distinguished service to international mass spectrometry”. The award will be presented to Dr Yost at the 25th International Mass Spectrometry Conference on August 19th in Melbourne, Australia. He will present a plenary lecture on “The Role of Tandem (Hyphenated) Methods for Mixture Analysis”.
In choosing him for this award, the IMSF said “Dr Yost has made substantial and unique contributions to the development and application of mass spectrometry in interdisciplinary collaborative settings and has been driving community growth and education forward in a way that the jury, consisting of the national mass spectrometry societies associated in the IMSF, found to be decisive in bestowing this honor on the awardee.”
As Dr Yost said, “I am deeply honored to be chosen for this award, reflecting the recognition of the entire global mass spectrometry community. I want to recognize all the individuals and organizations that have supported throughout my career, including my mentors, colleagues, and students.”
Rick is University Professor Emeritus and past Head of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Florida. He is perhaps best known as the co-inventor (along with Chris Enke of Michigan State University and Jim Morrison of LaTrobe University in Australia) of the triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. The triple quad has become the most common mass spectrometer in the world, with sales of well over $1 billion per year. It is today the gold standard for quantitative analysis in metabolomics, clinical analysis, drug discovery and development, environmental analysis, and a wide variety of other application areas. That invention and subsequent research in Rick’s lab at the University of Florida have helped transform tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) from a niche research area, largely for fundamental chemistry studies, into a practical, widely available analytical technique.
Dr Yost’s research has had an enormous impact on public welfare and human health. For example, the triple quad enabled wide-scale screening programs for all newborns across the US and around the world; over 10 million babies are screened annually using this technique, identifying serious and life-threatening diseases in over 10,000 newborns each year). Over the last decade, the triple quad has replaced routine clinical tests for many important disease biomarkers; it has also streamlined drug development programs, enabling new and improved therapeutics to reach patients at unprecedented rates and dramatically earlier.
Dr Yost has amassed an incredible record of research accomplishments, citizenship, teaching, and sharing great science. He has graduated well over 100 PhD students and has served the mass spec community in many venues, including serving on the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Board for 10 years, including as President from 2018-2020. He was a founding member of the International Mass Spectrometry Society back in 1998, and has presented over a hundred plenary and invited lectures at international venues, including IMSC. He has also directed the NIH Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolomics since 2013 and the nationwide NIH Metabolomics Consortium since 2018.