ABOVE: Richard Ernst, circa 1990
ETH ZURICH
Richard Ernst, a chemist whose Nobel Prize–winning work brought practical applications to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, died June 4 at the age of 87 in his hometown in Switzerland, ETH Zurich announced. Ernst’s work refining NMR technology set the stage for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which has been a mainstay of medical diagnostics for more than 30 years.
Born on August 14, 1933, in Winterthur, Switzerland, Ernst was raised with his two sisters by his mother and his father, who taught architecture at a trade school. He was an accomplished cello player with an eye on composing music, but as a teenager, he stumbled across a case of chemicals owned by his late uncle who worked as a metallurgical engineer, according to his Nobel autobiography.
“I became almost immediately fascinated by the possibilities of trying out all conceivable reactions with them, some leading to ...
