From:  Neil S. Sullivan (sullivan@phys.ufl.edu)
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 8:21 PM
 

 
World-renowned physicist E. Raymond Andrew passed away on Sunday, May 26 at his home in Gainesville. Andrew was Graduate Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida and was a member of the Royal Society. He served as Graduate Research Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Florida from 1983-99. Andrew was renowned internationally for his work on magnetic resonance and in particular for his pioneering contributions to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which has made such an enormous contribution to medicine.

Although Andrew was truly one of the greats in his field of science, he always had time to talk to and encourage young scholars and students. He was a statesman and a gentleman in all his interactions with fellow scientists, staff and students. He will be dearly missed by all who had the fortune to know him.

Andrew was a graduate of the Cavendish Laboratories, Cambridge and held the degrees of B.A. (with a First in Physics) 1942, M.A. 1946, Ph.D. 1948, and D.Sc. 1964. His first work on NMR came shortly after it was discovered at Harvard, where he was a Commonwealth Fellow from 1948-49. He returned to Scotland as lecturer at St. Andrews where he carried out seminal NMR studies of solids. Many of his experiments are classics in today’s textbooks.

Andrew moved to the University of Wales (Aberystwyth) in 1954 and was Professor and Head of the Department of Physics until 1964. During this period he made one of his most significant discoveries, the narrowing of NMR lines by magic angle spinning, which has been the foundation of modern high resolution NMR studies for chemical structures. In 1964 he was appointed Lancashire Professor and Head of Physics at Nottingham where he became Dean in 1975. There, Andrew continued his work on using rapid rotation of samples for high resolution studies and made another major contribution to the field of magnetic resonance with his pioneering studies on MRI.

Andrew left Britain for the US in 1983 to join the NMR physics group at the University of Florida where he had enjoyed long friendships with Tom Scott and Jim Brookeman. Every time Andrew made a move he added another quantum to the advances in NMR. Indeed, he played a major role in establishing the vision for the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Florida in 1990. Andrew continued a very active program at UF with particular interest in the use of a recently acquired 3 T whole body-imaging capability jointly operated by UF and the Veterans’ Administration Medical Center in Gainesville.

Andrew’s work was characterized by his exceptional ability to see things clearly and a careful insight into the fundamentals of his area of physics. All in the field are deeply indebted to him, not only for his accomplishments but also for the style that was his hallmark: he was a firm but kind gentleman of high standards that could only come from an aristocrat of the academy.

Andrew is survived by his wife Eunice, twin daughters, Patricia Andrew and Charmian Hopkins, and his grandchildren Heather and Holly Hopkins.

The memorial service for Raymond Andrew will be held on Thursday June 7 at 2PM at Holy Trinity Church in Gainesville.  The church is at 100 NE 1st Street.