As part of our Celebrating Great British Science campaign, Gary Harland explains how a hidden 'Manchester Hub' has been the driving force behind the evolution of Mass Spectrometry

摘要

If you were to reflect on the history of Manchester, you might think of it as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, with cotton and coal transforming it into one of the worlds first industrial cities. Another integral part of Manchester's rich heritage is undoubtedly its academia. John Dalton, a Manchester Quaker schoolmaster and self-educated chemist, first postulated his atomic meory in the first decade of the 19th Century. His pioneering work forms the backbone of chemistry today, informing the many scientific developments that have shaped our future with one of these, of course, being mass spectrometry. Indeed the unit of measurement of atomic mass itself-the Dalton - is named after the Manchester-based chemist.