Mass spectrometry underwent dramatic changes during the decade of the 1980s. Fast atom bombardment (F AB) ionization, developed by Barber and coworkers, made it possible for all mass spectrometry laboratories to analyze polar, highly functionalized organic molecules, and in some cases ionic, inorganic, and organometallic compounds. The emphasis of much of this work was on molecular weight determination. Parallel with the development of ionization methods (molecular weight mass spectrometry) for polar biological molecules, the increased mass range of sector and quadrupole mass spectrometers...