Richard Robert Ernst is a Swiss researcher and teacher who received the 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the development of highresolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Ernst’s refinements made NMR a vital tool in chemistry and other areas of science, including medical examination.
Ernst was born in 1933 in Winterthur, Switzerland, an industrial town but with strong artistic pretensions. The young Richard was attracted by both, playing cello in music ensembles and practicing chemistry – often with alarming results – with a set left behind by a deceased uncle, an engineer. He gained a BA in chemistry at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in Zurich in 1957 and – after a break for military service – a PhD in physical chemistry in 1962. For his PhD, Ernst worked with high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), designing and building improved NMR spectrometers. On leaving university, Ernst decided to apply for industrial work in the US, and from 1963–68 worked as a research chemist for Varian Associates in Palo Alto, California, who were also carrying out NMR research. “Indeed, I was extremely lucky,” he recalls. “Weston Anderson was on his way to invent Fourier transform spectroscopy in order to improve the sensitivity of NMR by parallel data acquisition.” Indeed, Ernst says, it was Anderson who in 1964 inspired Ernst to try using short, intense pulses of radio waves, rather than the slow, sweeping radio waves traditionally used in NMR spectroscopy. This dramatically improved the sensitivity of the device, allowing analysis of a greater range of nuclei types and smaller amounts of materials, and led to Fourier transform (FT) NMR as we know it today. The first successful experiments were done in summer 1964 while Anderson was away.
Strangely, the response to the discovery was muted, and although Varian took out a patent on the process they did not show much interest in the device until Tony Keller and his colleagues at the rival fi rm of Bruker Analytische Messtechnik produced a first commercial FT NMR spectrometer in 1969. By that time, Ernst had returned to Switzerland (in 1968) to teach at the ETH. He was made assistant professor in 1970 and full professor in 1976. He headed a research group in NMR, where he made further advances, including the use of stochastic resonance as an alternative to pulse FT spectroscopy – he had already used stochastic resonance at Varian to decouple and improve carbon-13 spectra. In 1971, Belgian scientist Jean Jeener proposed using a two-pulse radio sequence to produce a two-dimensional spectrum. Ernst’s group took up the challenge and performed the first experiments using the technique in 1974, leading to a scheme of determining the three-dimensional structure of chemical and biochemical compounds and is used today also to study the rates of chemical reactions.
Ernst 1974 expanded the 2D spectroscopy principle to medical NMR imaging, leading to the invention of Fourier zeugmatography which is the basis of numerous imaging techniques used today in clinical medicine. Ernst is married to Magdalena Kielholz. They have two daughters and a son.
This text and the picture of the Nobel Laureate were taken from the book: "NOBELS. Nobel Laureates photographed by Peter Badge" (WILEY-VCH, 2008).
Picture: © Peter Badge/ Foundation Lindau Nobelprizewinners
Meetings at Lake Constance |
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BENEFACTORS:
(GB) Medical Research Council (MRC)
(AT) Notenbank Österreich
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