The electrospray ionization technique was first reported by Masamichi Yamashita and John Fenn in 1984, and independently by Lidia Gall and co-workers in Russia, also in 1984. Gall's work was not recognised or translated in the western scientific literature until a translation was published in 2008. The development of electrospray ionization for the analysis of biological macromolecules was rewarded with the attribution of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to John Bennett Fenn and Koichi Tanaka in 2002.
