Ray Freeman. 6 January 1932—1 May 2022

Abstract

Ray Freeman pioneered many of the important advances in the technique of liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy: he changed fundamentally the ways in which chemists and structural biologists use NMR. Born in Nottingham, he was an undergraduate chemistry student at Oxford after National Service working with radar, and completed his Part II and doctoral research with Rex Richards (FRS 1959). After brief spells with Anatole Abragam (ForMemRS 1983) in Saclay, France, and at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, he worked for 10 years in the research department of Varian Associates, Palo Alto, USA. He was appointed as lecturer in physical chemistry and tutorial fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1973, and subsequently promoted to Aldrichian praelector. In 1987 he was appointed to the John Humphrey Plummer chair at the University of Cambridge, where he remained active in research long after his retirement in 1999, publishing his last paper at the age of 84.