Tribute to Professor Ray Dupree (1937-2025)
Ray Dupree’s research career started at the University of Exeter in 1959 where the project included building a complete ESR spectrometer from scratch, including the magnet! He came to 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. He spent sabbatical periods abroad including at AT&T Bell laboratories (New Jersey) in 1975, where he made the transition to NMR, Oregon State University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of California at Berkeley.
Ray Dupree’s research in magnetic resonance has encompassed many different aspects and applications of the technique. It started off looking at conduction electron spin resonance in metals and using this approach and then NMR to investigate the metal-insulator transitions in liquid metals. In the early 1980s, an important switch came in the move to magic angle spinning (MAS) techniques and applying these initially to silicate glasses, and then a whole range of other inorganic materials such as ceramics and zeolites, including in 1990s at the UK’s first wide-bore 600 MHz solid-state NMR spectrometer for which Ray secured the funding. Other 1980s work on high temperature superconductors allowed Ray to combine his main interests in magnetic resonance. 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
Professor, and continued to cultivate new research areas such as in the fields of double rotation technique (DOR) of quadrupolar nuclei, the application of the GIPAW method for calculating NMR parameters, and dynamic nuclear polarisation. Notably, Ray moved onto work applying MAS NMR to biological molecules, in particular plant cell walls, in a fruitful collaboration with his son, Professor Paul Dupree, in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge.
Ray Dupree founded the solid-state NMR group at the University of Warwick that has grown 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, and served on the national management committee, later termed Facility Executive, from the start of the national research facility until 2020.
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. The fact that this was driven by a philosophy that finding things out was a high calling that he never lost interest in is a remarkable testament to Ray. People looking to have a highly successful scientific career will do well to examine Ray’s approach. 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 finding a narrow furrow and just looking at that.
It is a comfort to his friends and colleagues at Warwick and elsewhere, that Ray was active doing NMR research until the end. On the day of his passing, Ray had helped to pack a sample ready for running the day after at the recently installed 1.2 GHz NMR spectrometer and was working on a soon to be submitted manuscript.
An online book of condolence is available to share memories of Ray and send messages of condolence to Ray's family and colleagues.