The father of the MRI and Nobel laureate in chemistry, Richard Ernst, died at the age of 87. Your family will announce this on Tuesday. The former top researcher has lived in a nursing home in his native Winterthur since the beginning of 2020. He leaves behind a wife and three children.
Ernst was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his groundbreaking contributions to the development of high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). The method is used to determine the structure of molecules in a solution. This allows different chemical systems from small molecules to proteins and nucleic acids to be observed.
In the opinion of the Nobel Committee in Stockholm, the technology developed by Ernst was the “most powerful instrumental measuring method in chemistry”. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is of great importance not only in chemistry, but also in physics, biology and medicine.
Ernst’s research formed the basis for modern magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The diagnostic devices can be found in every hospital today and are used to display tissue and organs in the body. In contrast to X-ray machines, the MRI does not expose patients to harmful radiation.
Active in Switzerland and the USA
Ernst was born in Winterthur in 1933. He studied at the ETH in Zurich, where he obtained his diploma in 1956 and his doctorate in 1962. After a research stay in the USA, he became a private lecturer at the ETH in 1968, where he had been professor of physical chemistry since 1976 and headed a research group dealing with magnetic resonance spectroscopy. For some time he was also director of the Laboratory for Physical Chemistry at the ETH. He retired in 1998.
The first successful experiments on NMR were carried out in 1945 at the US universities of Harvard and Standford by two independent research groups. A breakthrough came in 1966, when Ernst, together with the American Weston A. Anderson, developed a method to increase the sensitivity of the spectra.
In the mid-1970s, Ernst also proposed a method for receiving NMR tomographic images, which turned out to be one of the most widely used. NMR is used in medicine to study a patient’s response to drugs or a lack of oxygen.
Call from Nobel Committee on the plane
Ernst is one of a total of eight Swiss Nobel Prize winners in chemistry to date. When the Nobel Committee awarded the Swiss the highest honor in the field of chemical science in 1991, Ernst said he was on a flight to the USA, where he was to receive a high award from Columbia University. The pilot asked him into the cockpit on board because of the call from the Stockholm Nobel Committee.
Ernst invested a considerable part of the prize money of 1.4 million Swiss francs in his collection of Tibetan art. The art enthusiast gave lectures worldwide not only on magnetic resonance spectroscopy, but also on the historical development of spectroscopy, painting in Central Asia and the analysis of pigments in painting using Raman spectroscopy.
Ernst received numerous honors and awards for his work. In addition to the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, the Wolf Prize for Chemistry (1991), the Horwitz Prize (1991), and the Marcel Benoist Prize (1986) were among them. He has also received more than a dozen honorary doctorates from universities in Germany and abroad. He was a member of numerous scientific societies and was a member of the Swiss Science Council (2000 to 2002).
Doubt and Criticism in Autobiography
In 2008, Winterthur presented him with the “Winterthur Lion” award for his services to the city. It was said that he made the city better known thanks to the Nobel Prize. The native of Winterthur always remained loyal to his hometown, with the exception of a longer stay in the USA.
His autobiography was published in 2020. In it he revealed himself to be a doubter and also denounced grievances. He described university research as a shark tank. In the book he called on scientists to speak up in the face of the challenges in the world.
“We have a responsibility to express ourselves as freely and as critically as possible on all relevant topics,” wrote Ernst. The universities today are too limited to imparting facts and specialized detailed knowledge. “We have to learn again at universities how to dream, how to invent an ideal world and how to implement visions.”
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