Tony W. Keller (1937 - 2023)

  CERM joins the International Magnetic Resonance community to remember and honor Dr. h.c. Tony W. Keller, who passed away on October 27, 2023, aged 86.

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Tony Keller was a true industrial pioneer, who dedicated over half a century of his life to Bruker, where he held key leadership roles until his retirement in 2010. Over those decades, he introduced groundbreaking NMR technologies, including the world's first multinuclear Fourier-transform NMR spectrometers. Many of us knew Tony Keller as a sincere partner at Bruker, a man devoted to advancing technology and ensuring the highest quality instrumentation for our community. His collaborative and innovation-driven approach led to other groundbreaking achievements, such as superconducting NMR magnets, digital spectrometers, cryogenically cooled probes, and the successful realization of the challenging 1.2 GHz ultra-high field NMR systems. These innovations have since become essential in structural biology research, metabolomics, pharmaceutical research, advanced materials and renewable energy research.

In recognition of his outstanding contributions to our field, Dr. Keller received multiple honorary doctoral degrees titles, among which we fondly recall the Honorary Doctorate in Structural Biology from CERM, which was awarded to him in Florence on the occasion of the 2010 WWMR, a Joint EUROMAR 2010 and 17th ISMAR Conference.
We at CERM are proud of having developed a deep and sincere friendship with Tony over many decades. Our many discussions and bargaining with him over the conditions to purchase NMR instruments were always characterized by profound esteem and mutual trust. In fact, we have always seen Tony as colleague scientist and a friend in the first place. In those times, handshaking was all that was needed to seal a deal!

Tony's profound impact on the field of Magnetic Resonance has left an indelible mark, and his legacy will continue to shape the future of NMR technology and applications.