Richard R. Ernst

Ernst married Magdalena Kielholz on 9 October 1963. The couple has three children; two daughters named Anna Magdalena and Katharina Elisabeth, and a son called Hans-Martin. All three of them are educators.

In his spare time, he still enjoys music and is a passionate musician. He also collects Asian art and is especially interested in Tibetan scroll paintings.

Richard R. Ernst was born on 14 August 1933 in Winterthur, a suburb of Zürich, Switzerland, to Robert Ernst and Irma Brunner. He had two sisters. His father, Robert, was a teacher of architecture at the technical high school of Winterthur.

Winterthur was a unique blend of artistic and industrious activities which influenced both, Richard’s leisurely and professional interests. At an early age, he learned how to play the violoncello and got interested in musical composition.

At the age of 13, however, he discovered his interest in chemistry. In his family garret, he chanced upon a box filled with chemicals that belonged to his late uncle, who was a metallurgical engineer but interested in chemistry. Thereafter, he started experimenting with the chemicals and became increasingly curious about chemical reactions.

He furthered this interest by reading all available books on chemistry at his home and the city library. Before long, he realized that he wanted to be a chemist instead of a musical composer.

After high school, he enrolled at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich), eager to study his favourite subject. However, he was disappointed with the way Chemistry was being taught and often reverted to additional readings for enhanced knowledge.

Richard R. Ernst received his diploma in chemistry in 1957. After a short break for military service, in 1962, he received his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry under Professor Hans H. Günthard from ETH Zürich.

For his doctoral thesis, he worked with fellow scientist, Hans Primas, on high resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), designing and building improved NMR spectrometers.

His post-doctoral year was spent as a researcher and teacher at ETH Zürich. After university, he decided to pursue an industrial job in the United States. In 1963, he joined as a research scientist at Varian Associates in Palo Alto, California.

This move became the turning point of his career. At Varian, he met other famous scientists who were working in the same field, albeit with clear commercial goals. The association with likeminded colleagues motivated him to continue his research.

He particularly associated with American scientist Weston A. Anderson, and by 1966 they significantly enhanced NMR spectra by replacing slow sweep radio frequencies with high intensity short pulses. As a result, spectra that were previously too weak for identification were now clearly discernible.

In 1966, together with scientist Weston A. Anderson, he discovered that the sensitivity of NMR techniques (previously restricted to the analysis of only a few nuclei) could be significantly increased by replacing slow, sweeping radio waves with short, intense pulses. This discovery enabled the analysis of many more types of nuclei and smaller amounts of materials.

With his experimental demonstration of the ‘two-dimensional’ NMR technique, scientists were able to determine the 3D structure of organic and inorganic compounds and biological macromolecules such as proteins. They were also able to study the interaction between biological molecules and other substances such as water, drugs etc., identify chemical species and study the rate of chemical reactions.