Prof. Ernst was born 1933 in Winterthur, Switzerland.
His father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high
school of our city. At the age of 13, He found in the attic a case filled with
chemicals and the journey began. After diploma as a "Diplomierter
Ingenieur Chemiker" and some extensive military service, Ernst started a
PhD thesis in the laboratory of Professor Günthard. Fortunately, he came in
contact with a young and brilliant scientist Hans Primas, who never went
through any formal studies but nevertheless acquired rapidly whatever he needed
for his work that was then concerned with high resolution nuclear magnetic
resonance (NMR), a field in its infancy at that time. After some years of work,
he became interested in industry and joined Varian Associates in US. During
last years at Varian (1966-68), he developed numerous computer applications in
spectroscopy for automated experiments and improved data processing with his
co-workers. He continued to work on methodological improvements of time-domain
NMR with repetitive pulse experiments and Fourier double resonance. In
addition, he with his coworkers performed the first pulsed time-domain
chemically-induced dynamic nuclear polarization (CIDNP) experiments. In this
way, He struggled with the NMR technique, which was about to die at that time
and made this technique so profound, accurate and thus useful in medicine that
now we are observing the applications of NMR spectroscopy in medicine as
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which is very important tool in imaging of
internal parts of body.
Prof. Richard Ernst is
now 78 years old, but very hopeful and energetic and careful towards new
responsibilities. He has keen interest in Asian arts, music, and culture. He
enjoys interactions with young researchers and motivating them for doing
valuable work for the betterment of the society.
Recently Mr. Meher Wan, got opportunity to
interact with Prof. Richard R. Ernst on his life and research work. Here are
the excerpts of interaction.
First of all, I thank you
Professor for accepting my request for your. I feel that your thoughts will
motivate young minds to opt science as their career with social responsibility.
Meher Wan.
Your work was considered for Nobel in 1991. After receiving
Nobel Prize for Chemistry, How your life has been changed? What type of relax
or responsibility do you feel after this award?
Prof. Richard R. Ernst .My life changed very
little! You know that our shadow follows us irrespective of superficial
successes. I was always my biggest own hurdle to overcome. I had afterward even
less time to relax. But indeed, my responsibility grew. I feel obliged to say
what I think about our egomaniac course of doing business and structuring our
personal lifes. I try to teach as much as I can, being aware that after all it
will not help too much except for providing me better sleep.
MW. Let me
ask you about your days of childhood. How do you remember the childhood and
boyhood days of Richard? How did you perform in your schools? Where did you
study?
R. Ernst. I went to school in our city Winterthur. I was not a good student. I was
constantly thinking how I could annoy my teachers. I was almost thrown our of
high school. I mostly learned by myself, for example by doing chemical
experiments in the basement of our house; and I survived and became a chemist!
MW. A very
curious violinist moved towards chemistry, remember that times for us.
R. Ernst. I had two passions in my youth: chemistry and music. I
played the cello and I was composing music besides doing chemistry experiments.
But surely, I selected the proper profession!
MW. You
state in your autobiography for website of Swedish Academy, “I was rapidly
disappointed by the state of chemistry in the early fifties as it was taught.”
I think, this is the trend of schooling of science in many countries till now.
According to you what should be the mechanism of education for best
understanding of subject by a student?
R. Ernst. The best way of education is to evoke the curiosity of the
students and then let them discover nature and the world themselves. Classroom
teaching is absolutely useless, it just causes boredom.
MW. When
you started your Ph.D., what was in your mind? Did you want to serve the nation
or industry or somewhat else?
R. Ernst. I wanted to become a respectable person who contributes
something of value for mankind and gains respect in this way
MW. Which quality
of NMR spectroscopy impressed you, that you were motivated to invest your whole
life for this field of science?
R. Ernst. I was not primarily interested in NMR, but I was thrown
into NMR and I started to like it. This happens so often in life. We are not
born mathematicians or biologists. But our interests grow accidentally by
doing. And then you have to stay in a field until you have achieved something.
MW. Let us know the journey for making of Fourier
Transform NMR. What problems did you face for this work? Any interesting story
related to this instrumentation. I read somewhere; the research paper related
to this work was rejected two times.
R. Ernst. NMR
suffered from very sensitivity and it was necessary to find a way to improve
sensitivity. Parallel data acquisition was the solution. It led to Fourier
transformation.
MW. Which
scientific goal do you still want to achieve?
R. Ernst. In the moment I am working on pigment analysis in Central
Asian paintings in order to understand their origin and dating and for finding
means of conservation. NMR is useless for this purpose and I am using Raman
spectroscopy.
MW. What phenomenons
lead your group to think about 2D Fourier transform NMR spectroscopy?
R. Ernst. For determining molecular structures, one needs spatial
relations between nuclei. A two-dimensional map may contain this type of
information.
MW. Now
Multi-dimensional spectroscopy is in existence, what do you hope about future
of this field?
R. Ernst. I hope that it will find even more wide-spread application.
MW. Techniques developed
by you and your group have very wide applications now in different fields of
science, How do you feel about? Have you expected the wide range of application
of these, when you started the work on it?
R. Ernst. What could I ask
for more? There is nothing better in life than to experience the
"usefulness" of your "children"!
MW. In your valuable life which thing you
missed, and want to do?
R. Ernst. I hope to find more time to contemplate on the sense of our
lives. I hope earnestly to be less disturbed by obnoxious journalists!!!
MW. You have interest in culture and art of
different continents, how do the arts of Tibet impress you?
R. Ernst. I like in particular the colorfulness and the visuality
that allows an easy entrance across language barriers. It contains a wealth of
immortal truths.
MW. You often talk about
the responsibilities of researchers.
R. Ernst. The responsibility is more with academic teachers than
with the researchers. anyway research is only a means of teaching and learning.
Academic teachers are the only ones who can express what they think without the
danger of losing the job, as politicians and merchants would. Thus they are
obliged to take advantage of their privileged position.
MW. What do you want to
convey to the young minds who want to opt science as their career? and to
common public also.
R. Ernst. When ever you try to honestly evaluate the surroundings and
our responsibilities to improve them for the sake of future generations, you
are in the midst of scientific reasoning and it is not far of becoming a
professional scientist, researcher and in particular a responsible teacher.
I am very grateful to you that you invested your precious
time for us. I am studying your articles about science and society. Hoping for
next conversation on society, science and cultures very soon.
(This interview is published in 'Dream 2047' a bilingual magazine of Vigyan Prasar of DST, Govt of India, you can get it by clicking the link, you can read it in Hindi )
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As we have entered in 2012, speculations about Doomsday are
on full swing in common public to internet. The stories of doomsday got rebirth
after the movie “2012” directed by Roland Emmerich, which was based on supposed uncontrolled devastation
in 2012. This movie neither talks about the fictional planet “Nibiru” nor Polar
shift of earth with appropriate clarity. Presently, there is much amount of material
around us regarding doomsday-2012. You can find approximately 200 books dealing
with doomsday on book-selling website ‘Amazon’. Many other websites are
claiming of doing research for survival of mankind during doomsday crisis. News
of this hoax is blossomed on every face of media and public. .jpg)
The saga began with the claims that a
supposed planet ‘Nibiru’, which was discovered by the Sumerians of Mayan
civilization, will collide with our earth in Dec, 2012. A controversial fiction
writer Zecharia Sitchin writes about .jpg)
There is nothing wrong in the fact that
Mayan calendar will have so-called end in Dec, 2012. Mayan method of
calculating the weeks and years was very hectic and tiring as it was a very
long method. Neither had they advanced methods of arithmetic nor the computers
as we have today. They could have calculated these spans of time with pen and
papers. We can guess the complexity of these calculations by knowing, that in Mayan calendar one Alautun (Mayan unit of
time) is equal to approximately twenty three billion days. All the calendars
have a sort of periodicity in dates or in other parameters. Some experts and
astronomers are saying that Mayans’ calendar system has cycles when their
parameters match after a certain time, period of this cycle is 5128 years.
Current cycle in Mayan calendar system was thought to have started in 3114 BC
and it will end in 2012. According to this theory, the next cycle will end in
7140 AD. This is the point when hype overtakes reality. .jpg)
‘Nibiru’ is a name in Babylonian astrology
sometimes associated with the god Marduk. Nibiru appears as a minor character
in the Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish as recorded in the library
of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria (668-627 BCE). .jpg)
The question is who are responsible for
creating these types of hoax in the media, which create phobia and panic in
public? Also, what are the benefits of creating these types of hoax? Movies are
being released dealing with public fear about many topics from collapse of dams
to doomsday. News channels are eager to sell phobia by showing breaking news
and special reports with live coverage. A new type of market is evolving in the
mean time and that is market of fear. After long sell of the dreams, sex etc,
now it’s time to sell fear. I have seen some websites encouraging people to
register for a lottery to those who will be saved during doomsday crisis. These websites are encouraging people to
spend their money as nothing will remain after doomsday to enjoy or whatever
people want without any question of right or wrong. Creating this sort of fake websites is a new advertising technique
called “viral marketing”, by analogy with computer viruses. We should
understand that these types of hypes are reinforced by cheap market. The world
will not end so quickly, it will go on with its direct and indirect
contradictions.
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