Edward O. Stejskal (1932-2011)

Obituary (adapted from http://www. chemistry. illinois Our esteemed colleague, Professor Edward O. Stejskal passed away December 2, 2011. Native of Chicago, Illinois, he received his BS in chemistry in 1953 at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He obtained his PhD in 1957, in the group of Professor H.S. Gutowsky where NMR was first applied to chemistry. Edward Stejskal was the first NMR spectroscopist to write a thesis on using nuclear spin relaxation to characterize molecular motion in solids. He was a NSF postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University until he went to the University of Wisconsin as Instructor and Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 1958. At the University of Wisconsin in Madison along with his first student, John Tanner, he developed the pulsed field gradient (PFG) spin echo method for the study of diffusion and flow. This work has laid the experimental and theoretical foundations for diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, which is widely employed today. In 1964, he went to Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri, to work in their Corporate Research Department as Research Specialist, Senior Research Specialist and Fellow. At Monsanto Company he and Jacob Schaefer demonstrated the usefulness of combining cross polarization with magic angle sample spinning (CPMAS) to obtain high-resolution spectra in the solid state aimed at characterizing molecular motions and phase separation. In 1986 he went to North Carolina State University in Raleigh as Professor of Chemistry. He taught and continued his research with colleagues and graduate students. In 1997 he became Professor Emeritus. He continued to mentor new faculty and consult on new uses of NMR. He was a Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance; member of the Editorial board of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance; Secretary and Chair of the Experimental NMR Conference; member ACS; and member APS. In 2002 the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the ACS (SERMACS) honored him for the many significant contributions that he made to the science of magnetic resonance. In addition to his seminal contributions to the field of NMR, Edward O. Stejskal will be remembered for the extra effort he put into helping colleagues and students. In November 2012, a special Southeastern Magnetic Resonance Symposium at SEMRC was dedicated to his memory.

The Stejskal-Tanner Experiment Erwin Hahn Stejskal, E. O.; Tanner, J. E. Spin Diffusion Measurements: Spin Echoes in the Presence of a Time-Dependent Field Gradient. The Journal of Chemical Physics 1965, 42, (1), 288-92 This paper has laid foundations for diffusion-weighted imaging in MRI Later, Stejskal and Tanner published a paper in which a very precise and reliable means of measuring such motion was demonstrated, a method which has come to be known as the Pulsed Gradient Spin Echo (PGSE) method.. Ed Stejskal

Fundamentals of CP MAS NMR

129Xe NMR Instrumentation In later years, Prof. Stejskal was involved in designing and building a 129Xe NMR apparatus for hyperpolarization NMR.