Sir Rex Richards FRS a second interview with Max Blythe: Interview 2

Sir Rex Richards FRS has had a distinguished academic career at the University of Oxford, serving as Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry (1964-70), Warden of Merton College (1969-84), and Vice-Chancellor (1977-81). In this second interview he talks to Max Blythe about his work on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) after returning to Oxford from Harvard University, where he held a research fellowship in 1955. He begins by discussing some of the developments in NMR in the 1950s and 1960s. He then speaks of a Science Research Council (SRC) funded project in collaboration with Martin Wood (now Sir Martin), the founder and chairman of Oxford Instruments Ltd, resulting in the construction of a 320 megahertz superconducting magnet employing niobium-titanium, which was used for a great variety of NMR work during the 1960s. The interview moves on to 1969 when Sir Rex was elected Warden of Merton College and ceased to be Dr Lee's Professor in Chemistry, in charge of the largest university physical chemistry department in the country. He talks of his wish to remain actively involved in research, and a move to the Biochemistry Department at Oxford, where he was given laboratory space by Professor Rodney Porter to work on the application of NMR to biochemical materials. There is discussion of the establishment of the multidisciplinary Oxford Enzyme Group in the early 1970s, with Sir Rex as chairman and members who included Dorothy Hodgkin, Jeremy Knowles, David Phillips, George Radda and Bob Williams. Sir Rex speaks of SRC support for the Group, which financed a number of postdoctoral fellowships, an enzyme preparation laboratory, and a high-resolution 270 megahertz NMR spectrometer for studying proteins, developed in collaboration with Oxford Instruments Ltd and Bruker Physik of Germany. He goes on to acknowledge the work in the early 1970s of Iain Campbell, Bob Williams and Chris Dobson in establishing techniques for analysing high-resolution NMR spectra of proteins. In the following section of the interview, Sir Rex talks of his research carried out in the 1970s with George Radda and David Gadian on phosphorus resonances, using the 320 megahertz magnet. He then proceeds to discuss the work of George Radda and Steve Busby on phosphorus resonances in muscle extracts, which was the foundation of clinical magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Wide-bore magnets for muscle research work were developed by Oxford Instruments, and the potential of NMR in muscle physiology studies was recognised by physiologists, including Douglas Wilkie, professor of physiology at University College, London, who worked with David Gadian at Oxford. In the final part of the interview Sir Rex speaks of the exciting advances in the technology of superconducting magnets in the 1970s, and the development by Oxford Instruments of a 470 megahertz magnet using the superconductor, niobium-tin