Professor Richard R. Ernst, born in Winterthur, Switzerland, studied Chemistry at ETH Zürich. After his PhD in 1962, he worked for 4 ½ years in the Company Varian Associates in Palo Alto, California, and laid foundations for modern Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), a powerful tool for the elucidation of molecular structures in chemistry and molecular biology.  It’s most spectacular application is MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging in clinical medicine. He was appointed as a Professor in Physical Chemistry 1972 at ETH Zürich and retired in 1998. For his contributions to NMR, he received numerous prizes, about 16 honorary doctor’s degrees, and 1991 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Besides his status as superstar scientist he enjoys collecting, analysing and restoringancient Tibetan art.

Richard R. Ernst was a Counsellor at One Young World Summits: 2010 in London.