John Rowan

I was sad to hear that John Rowan has passed away. I was his major professor during his time at Iowa State University. The general theme of his work was in an analytical method called inductively coupled plasma - mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). A sample is converted into atomic ions in a high temperature, ionized gas, then extracted into a device where they can be sorted by mass. The mass values where ions appear identify the elements in the original sample. The signals at each mass can be...