Peter Hore
Oxford University, Department of Chemistry
Peter Hore has spent most of his life in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, first as a student, then as a Junior Research Fellow (1982–83), and now as Professor of Chemistry. His only time away from Oxford was a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Groningen (1980–82). Over the years he has worked on a number of topics around magnetic resonance spectroscopy and the effects of electron and nuclear spins on chemical reactivity, an area known as Spin Chemistry. These include spin hyperpolarization, protein structure and folding, photosynthetic energy conversion, and NMR methodology. Since about 2005 he has been having fun trying to unravel the biophysical mechanism that allows migratory songbirds to detect the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field as an aid to navigation.