Steve was born in Warwickshire, England and was educated at Warwick School and Worcester College, Oxford, doing his Chemistry Part II in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory with Ray Freeman. He studied for his doctorate in Lausanne, Switzerland with Geoffrey Bodenhausen and then moved to Cambridge on a two-year personal postdoctoral fellowship, where he collaborated with both Ray Freeman and James Keeler. He held a fixed-term Lectureship in Manchester for a year, covering some teaching for Gareth Morris, before being awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and moving back to Oxford and the Physical Chemistry Laboratory.
In 1999, Steve took up his first real academic job in Exeter, where he was Reader in Magnetic Resonance until the Department of Chemistry was closed rather abruptly in 2005. He then moved to Glasgow, where he spent nine difficult years. Hence, in October 2015, it was with very great pleasure that Steve started work in Lancaster as Professor of Chemistry.
Steve has worked on a wide range of topics in the NMR field, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in vivo NMR spectroscopy, and solution-state NMR of both small and large (bio)molecules. Since the late 1990s, his research interests have mostly been concerned with the development and application of novel solid-state NMR methods. He has published more than 100 research papers, co-authored the book NMR: The Toolkit (with P. J. Hore and J. A. Jones), and co-edited the book NMR of Quadrupolar Nuclei in Solid Materials (with R. E. Wasylishen and S. E. Ashbrook).
Outside the lab, Steve is a keen hill-walker (282 Munros - yes, all of them! - and 65 Corbetts "bagged" so far) and amateur photographer of butterflies, dragonflies and reptiles (and anything else that will stay still long enough). He also enjoys nosing around historic and prehistoric ruins and is rarely happier than when he is sharing good food and an excellent bottle of wine with one or two close friends.
Personal Details
Name: Stephen Wimperis
Address: Department of Chemistry, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YB, United Kingdom
Career
1980-84 Worcester College, University of Oxford
BA (Honours) in Natural Science (Chemistry) 1984 Class II
Research 1983-84 in the laboratory of Professor R. Freeman F.R.S.
1985-88 Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
Doctorat ès Sciences 1988
Research in the laboratory of Professor G. Bodenhausen.
Doctoral thesis title: Relaxation-Allowed Coherence Transfer and Broadband Multiple-Pulse Techniques in NMR Spectroscopy.
1988-1990 University of Cambridge
SERC Personal Postdoctoral Fellow
Research Fellow of Darwin College
1990-1991 University of Manchester
Fixed-term Lecturer in Physical Chemistry
1991-1999 University of Oxford
Royal Society University Research Fellow
1993-96 R. J. P. Williams Research Fellow of Wadham College
Associate Member of the Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences
1999-2005 University of Exeter
Reader in Magnetic Resonance
2003-04 Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow
2006-2015 University of Glasgow
2006-07 Reader
2007-15 Professor of Magnetic Resonance
2015-20?? Lancaster University
2015-20 Professor of Chemistry
2020-?? Emeritus Professor
2021-24 Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow
