| Robert Graham Cooks | |
| Birth Place: | Benoni, South Africa |
| Nationality: | American |
| Field: | Chemistry, Mass spectrometry |
| Work Institutions: | Purdue University |
| Alma Mater: | University of Natal Cambridge University |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Frank L. Warren Peter Sykes |
| Doctoral Students: | Jennifer S. Brodbelt Gary Glish Livia S. Eberlin Scott A. McLuckey Vicki Wysocki Abraham Badu-Tawiah |
| Known For: | Mass Spectrometry |
| Footnotes: | Boyle Medal
|
Robert Graham Cooks is the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the Aston Laboratories for Mass Spectrometry at Purdue University. He is an ISI Highly Cited Chemist, with over 1,000 publications and an H-index of 144.[1]
Cooks received a bachelor of science and master of science degrees from the University of Natal in South Africa in 1961 and 1963, respectively. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Natal in 1965 and a second Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1967, where he worked with Peter Sykes. He then did post-doctoral work at Cambridge with Dudley Williams.
Cooks became an Assistant Professor at Kansas State University from 1968 to 1971. In 1971, he took a position at Purdue University. He became a Professor of Chemistry in 1980 and was appointed the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor in 1990.[2] Cooks was co-editor of the Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry from 2013-2017.[3] [4]
Research in Cooks' laboratory (the Aston Laboratories) has contributed to a diverse assortment of areas within mass spectrometry, ranging from fundamental research to instrument and method development to applications. Cooks' research interests over the course of his career have included the study of gas-phase ion chemistry, tandem mass spectrometry, angle-resolved mass spectrometry and energy-resolved mass spectrometry (ERMS); dissociation processes, including collision-induced dissociation (CID), surface-induced dissociation (SID), and photodissociation (PD); and desorption processes, including secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), laser desorption ionization (LD) and desorption electrospray ionization (DESI).
His research has ranged through areas from preparative mass spectrometry, ionization techniques and quadrupole ion traps (QITs) and related technologies to as far afield as abiogenisis (also known as "the origin of life") via homochirality.