Sir Rex Richards
Pioneer of NMR spectroscopy who contributed to its adoption in healthcare and other fields
SIR REX RICHARDS, who has died aged 96, was a pioneer of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and served as Warden of Merton College, Oxford, from 1969 to 1984 and as Vicechancellor of the University of Oxford from 1977 to 1981.
Richards was one of the first scientists to appreciate that the newly discovered phenomenon called nuclear magnetic resonance, first described and measured in 1938 by Isidor Rabi, and further developed in 1946 by Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell, could have unexpected applications in chemistry.
In the early 1950s, working at the Physical Chemistry Laboratory in Oxford, he set out to build his own NMR spectrometer from scratch, ignoring the advice of some fellow scientists that heavy magnets and masses of electronics had no place in a chemistry laboratory.
In an interview he recalled obtaining what he needed from an old aircraft hangar full of war surplus equipment in Abingdon where “you went with a trolley and just loaded it up and paid a few pence per pound weight”. He then spent hours and hours in the evenings labouring away with a soldering iron until his efforts were crowned with success.
He began working on structures of simple inorganic molecules and, progressing to more powerful magnets, was the first to apply NMR techniques to the determination of unknown molecular structures.
From 1969 to 1984 Richards was chairman of a group of researchers known as the Oxford Enzyme Group, among other things helping to design, with Oxford Instruments and Bruker, the first Fourier Transform spectrometer of sufficiently high field to resolve the NMR spectra of proteins and other complex molecules.
He contributed to the technique’s adoption in a wide variety of scientific disciplines and, working with the biochemist George Radda, was among the first researchers to investigate the properties of phosphorus resonances, whose use in analysing muscle tissue served as the foundation of clinical magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
This work led, in 1983, to the establishment of the first clinical NMR spectroscopy unit in the world, at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
Ray Freeman, one of his students, described Richards as an “ideal tutor for undergraduates, a charismatic lecturer in physical chemistry, and an excellent research supervisor” who
adopted a hands-off style of supervising, allowing his students to use their own initiative and not be hidebound by the idea that there is always a correct, prescribed way to attack a scientific problem.
He applied a similar philosophy to his role as Warden of Merton, explaining in an interview on his retirement that his aim was “to work towards an atmosphere of high standards of research and scholarship among fellows and graduates and high academic standards among undergraduates, and to help create an air of informality which is important for good academic work”.
Rex Edward Richards was born at Colyton in Devon on October 28 1922. His father, grandfather and greatgrandfather were small builders; his mother, who had been secretary to the Bishop of Exeter, was the “business brains” behind this family enterprise.
Richards was educated at Colyton Grammar School, from which he won an exhibition to St John’s College, Oxford, to read Chemistry despite having a nosebleed during the crucial exam and covering the paper in blood.
He went up to Oxford in 1942 and even as an undergraduate became engaged in wartime research, with HW Thompson, using infrared spectroscopy techniques to analyse everything from German synthetic rubbers and hexachlorobenzene insecticides for use in the tropics, to the chemical structure of the newlyisolated antibiotic, penicillin. As a result he became involved in designing and building infrared spectrographs using aluminiumised clock glasses, corks, wax and retort clamps.
Graduating with a First in 1945, Richards continued to work with Thompson, using the same techniques to investigate organic structures such as silicones, plastics and polymers and to research the thermodynamic properties of molecules used in the chemical industry, obtaining a Dphil in 1948.
In 1947 he had been elected Fellow and Tutor in Chemistry at Lincoln College, and after obtaining his Dphil, “casting around for something new to do”, he noticed the announcement of an “observation of NMR by Purcell and colleagues at Harvard and by Bloch and others at Stanford”. After reading up about the technique, he was inspired to build his own device.
This work led, in 1955, to his spending six months at Harvard as a research fellow under Robert Pound, a period during which he had many discussions with Purcell.
Back in Oxford, in 1964 he succeeded Sir Cyril Hinshelwood as Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry and moved as a fellow to Exeter College. Then, in 1969, he was elected Warden of Merton College.
It was a time when university budgets were growing, and Richards would describe his years at Merton as “very thrilling”, with the opportunity to develop initiatives such as “how to recruit undergraduates from schools which had not even heard of Merton, without having to worry too much about the cost.”
Richards’s years as Vice-chancellor of Oxford were similarly active. Green College was founded, as was the Nissan Institute, and he was instrumental in raising the money to build an annex to the Biochemistry Department with the aim of bridging Biochemistry and Physical Chemistry; it was named the Rex Richards Building.
During Richards’s time at Lincoln, the college received a generous benefaction, with the stipulation that some of it should be used for the encouragement of the visual arts. The Fellows decided to have an art exhibition in the Ashmolean from time to time and to invite the artist to lecture about it in the Playhouse. Richards, who had a great interest in modern art, suggested that the obvious first choice was Henry Moore.
Moore stayed at Lincoln for about a week and Richards got to know him well as he developed his own interest in the art world and, with his wife Eva, built up a small collection of works by contemporary artists and sculptors.
After his wardenship came to an end, Richards developed his academic and artistic interests in a wide range of activities. As Director of the Leverhulme Trust, the grant-making foundation, from 1984 to 1993, he set about replacing an antiquated office system with a fully automated system for which he himself wrote the programs. As a trustee of the Henry Moore foundation from 1989 (and chairman from 1994 to 2001), he also wrote the system for the foundation to run its donations programme.
In addition, Richards served as President of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1990–92), Chancellor of Exeter University (1982–98) and chaired numerous committees concerned with higher education. He was also Chairman of the British Postgraduate Medical Foundation (1986-93).
His interest in the art world led to his becoming a member of the National Gallery Scientific Advisory Committee (1978-2007, chairman 1991-93) a Trustee of the Tate Gallery (1982-88 and 1989-93) and of the National Gallery (1982-88 and 1989– 1993); he was particularly proud to have played a significant part in the appointment of Neil Macgregor as Director of the gallery in 1987.
Richard’s scientific work won him numerous honours and awards. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1959, he won its Davy Medal (1976) and Royal Medal (1986). Other awards include the Corday-morgan Medal of the Chemical Society, the President’s Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry and the Medal of Honour of the Rheinische Friedrich-wilhelms Universität, Bonn.
He was knighted in 1977 for services to NMR spectroscopy.
In 1948 he married Eva Vago, who had come to Britain as a refugee from Hungary in 1938. They had met when she was doing research work on ultraviolet spectroscopy and she went on to have a distinguished academic career in her own right.
She died in 2009 and he is survived by their two daughters.
Sir Rex Richards, born October 28 1922, died July 15 2019