My Way to NMR and to a Nobel Prize

Inselhalle

Conference Room 1–3

Moderator: Rainer Blatt
University of Innsbruck, Austria

A frequently asked question by students of all ages, in particular in Asia, is how one gets a Nobel Prize. In a particular answer I make here reference to the Chemistry Nobel Prize 2002. This prize was awarded to John Fenn (born 1917, Ph.D. 1940, Nobel work ∼1987), Koichi Tanaka (born 1959, B.S. 1983, Nobel research ∼1985) and myself (born 1938, Ph.D. 1964, Nobel research completed 1984). The diverse statistics on the careers of John Fenn and Koichi Tanaka will be illustrated with brief insights into their inventing, respectively, the electrospray and soft laser desorption techniques for studies of biological macromolecules by mass spectrometry. The lecture will end with a somewhat more detailed description of my own adventures in magnetic resonance and structural biology.