sentences:  Some have argued that Karas and Hillenkamp were more deserving of the Nobel Prize than Tanaka because their crystalline matrix method is much more widely used than Tanaka's liquid matrix.Countering this argument is the fact that Tanaka was the first to use a 337 nm nitrogen laser while Karas and Hillenkamp were using a 266 nm .The "modern" MALDI approach came into being several years after the first soft laser desorption of proteins was demonstrated.