My husband, Derek Shaw, who has died aged 83, worked throughout his professional life in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a technology which has since become central to the use of MRI scanners.
Derek worked initially for the hi-tech US company Varian Associates as an NMR specialist and product manager in the UK. Fascinated with the possibilities of this technology and its potential medical applications, in 1976 he wrote a book, Fourier Transform NMR Spectroscopy, as a guide to the theory and practice of NMR spectroscopy.
In 1977, he moved on to work for Oxford Instruments in marketing, before in 1981 he became the applications manager for General Electric, marketing MRI scanning equipment and lecturing to hospitals and research groups around the world.
Born in Southport, Lancashire, Derek, an only child, spent his early life secluded upstairs with his wooden train while his father, Stanley, was away at war and his mother, Winifred (nee Furlong), ran the grocery shop downstairs. He excelled in chemistry at King George V school in Southport before studying the subject at Queen Mary College, University of London, where he went on to do a PhD in the exciting new field of NMR. We met over a test tube in a chemistry laboratory at Queen Mary, and were married in 1966. After his PhD he went to work for Varian Associates, and his working career in NMR began.
He finally managed to stop working at the age of 72 in 2012, and in retirement kept alpacas in the paddock at the rear of our garden in the village of Berrick Salome in Oxfordshire.
He served on the parish council for 23 years, was a member of our local GP surgery’s patient panel, enjoyed being a “holy mower” (cutting the grass in the local churchyard) and compiled the Millennium Book in 2000 – a history of every house and family in Berrick Salome that was given to each villager, with a copy buried in a time capsule.
In 2017 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, partly through the use of an MRI scanner, and it was of considerable comfort to him to know that he had contributed in a small way to the technology that had helped neurologists understand his condition.
While his huge intellect could make him seem a bit serious at times, his human side radiated through. A villager once remarked to me: “I was always in awe of Derek as he was so clever and seemed so distant – then I saw him with his cats [Proton and Electron] and realised he was just a normal bloke.”
He is survived by me, our children, Chris and Penny, and four grandchildren.