Symposium for Professor Ray Dupree
A symposium in honour of Professor Ray Dupree will be held at the University of Warwick on the 18th May 2026. The meeting will highlight the many and varied projects that Ray was involved in during more than 60 years of research, 21 of which were after his formal retirement. Aspects of Ray’s work will be presented by colleagues, collaborators and research students of Ray’s across his research career. The meeting will also be an opportunity to share thoughts and memories with all of us that knew and worked with Ray and the effect he had on our lives and careers.
Professor Ray Dupree had a long and varied research career which started at the University of Exeter in 1959. He arrived at the newly founded University of Warwick as a lecturer in 1966, soon after the formation of the Department of Physics and before the first undergraduates were admitted. His career and research remained centred on Warwick, and he became Professor of Physics in 1990. A special issue in the journal Solid State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance marked Ray’s formal retirement in 2004 (some of the text here is borrowed from the editorial). Yet, Ray was very active as an Emeritus
Ray Dupree founded the solid-state NMR group at the University of Warwick that which has grown over his 60 years to a multi-PI environment with applications of NMR across a wide range of research spanning the materials and life sciences, as is fitting to Ray’s diverse research interests over his career. Ray was an ever-present support to colleagues, taking a great interest in the research taking place at Warwick. Ray was a co-applicant on the 2007 EPSRC grant that set up the UK High-Field Solid-State NMR Facility through the purchase of the 850 MHz wide-bore spectrometer which has since grown to include the 1 and 1.2 GHz spectrometers.
Over his career at Warwick, Ray Dupree supervised 20 PhD theses (completion dates from 1970 to 2003) and a number of research assistants many of whom have gone on to have a range of highly successful careers, including several in the world of magnetic resonance research. People who were supervised by Ray were taught about the proper scientific method by someone who was a natural experimentalist of the first order, but backed this up by a tremendous interest and grip of the underlying theory. However, it was Ray’s insatiable enthusiasm to use magnetic resonance to find out more about the natural world that was truly infectious. One can inspire in many ways and Ray made your research feel important because he always conveyed his genuine interest. He anticipated trends and did not follow the herd as his research evolved through ionic conductors to glasses and ceramics to high temperature superconductors to hydrogen-bonding to plant cell walls. It is a great example of a research career always steadily evolving and not getting stuck in a narrow furrow.
Confirmed Speakers
Welcome and registation 10:30 -11am and plan to end at 4pm. Full schedule will be announced soon.
Rosalie Cresswell (University of Warwick)
Andy Howes (University of Warwick)
Mark Smith (University of Southampton)
Christel Gervais (Sorbonne University)
Simon Kohn (University of Bristol)
Diane Holland (University of Warwick)
Paul Jonsen (TalaveraScience)
Anthony Watts (University of Oxford)
Roger Munn (Bruker, retired)
Eugeny Kryukov (Cryogenic Ltd)
Monday 18th May 2026 11am- B3.03 Zeeman Building, University of Warwick
This symposium is free to attend. Whilst it would be great to gather in person we plan to provide an online stream of the talks so that those that are unable to travel or are further a field can attend. Please register if you wish to attend in person (by 4th May) or online (by 11th May, meeting link will be shared by latest 15th May) via the link below: