| GRAPEFRUIT PLOTS |
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| A particular variety of diagrams Ray has used extensively is his "grapefruit plots". |
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| A Hahn 8-Ball Echo |
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| Ray's Informal Biography |
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School & Military Service
Ray was educated at the local grammar school, Nottingham High School,
where he won an Open Scholarship to Lincoln College, Oxford in December
1949 and (at the instigation of Lincoln College) deferred his admission
to Oxford to complete his military service in the Royal Air Force as a
radar instructor, reaching the dizzy rank of acting corporal, un-paid.
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Oxford University & Early Research
In October 1951 he returned to Oxford and began his studies in
Chemistry under the tutorship of Rex Richards, going on to do research
in Rex's group on NMR of the less-common nuclei (in particular 59Co) and earning his MA and D. Phil. degrees.
Joining the magnetic resonance group of Anatole Abragam at Saclay,
France in 1957, Ray did postdoctoral research under the direction of the
NMR pioneer Robert Pound (on leave from Harvard) on the
super-regenerative oscillator, and exploited that device to build a
stable high-resolution NMR spectrometer.
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Family
In 1958 Ray married Anne-Marie Périnet-Marquet (originally from Haute
Savoie, France) and they now have five children, Dominique, Anne,
Louise, Jean-Marc, and Lawrence.
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Varian Associates, California
After three years at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington,
United Kingdom, in the Basic Physics Division, Ray took leave of absence
in 1961 to work on double irradiation techniques with Wes Anderson at
Varian Associates in Palo Alto, California. This environment proved so
stimulating that one year was extended to twelve, and the young family
grew up as Californians; three children have now settled on the West
Coast.
Along with research at Varian on double-resonance, double-quantum
effects, spin-lattice relaxation, and Fourier transformation, Ray
assisted in the development of new Varian NMR spectrometers (XL-100 and
CFT-20).
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Back to Oxford
In 1973 Ray returned to Oxford as University Lecturer and Fellow of
Magdalen College, and started his own research group focused on
high-resolution NMR methodology.
He received the degree of D. Sc. in 1975 and was elected Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1979 (a period known in England as the 'Winter of
Discontent').
Boosted by the advent of some brilliant young Oxford research students,
the group produced several publications on new NMR techniques,
including two-dimensional NMR (triggered by the seminal suggestion of
Jean Jeener in Brussels).
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A Handbook of Magnetic Resonance
On a short sabbatical at CalTech in Pasadena Ray published 'A Handbook
of Magnetic Resonance' (translated into Japanese and Russian).
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Cambridge
In 1987 Ray made the forbidden transition to 'the other place'
(Cambridge) to take up the Plummer chair of magnetic resonance, and was
elected a Fellow of Jesus College. There he continued his research on
NMR methodology and wrote a second book, 'Spin Choreography'.
Statutory retirement came as an unwelcome surprise in 1999, but Ray
disregarded this formal restriction, continuing his research with a
long-time colleague Eriks Kupce, and producing his third book, 'NMR in
Chemistry and Medicine', published in 2003, and later translated into
Russian.
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| Ray Freeman |
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