Born some time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, after graduating from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1986, Lyndon Emsley completed a PhD at the Université de Lausanne in 1991 doing NMR spectroscopy of solutions with Geoffrey Bodenhausen. He then moved to the University of California Berkeley as a Fellow of the Miller Institute for basic Research in Science, working with Alex Pines, where he was introduced to solid-state NMR. In 1993 he moved the French National Laboratory for Atomic Energy Research in Grenoble, and in 1994 he was appointed to a Professorship at the Ecole normale supérieure in Lyon, where he became a full professor in 1995. He was Head of the Experimental Chemistry Laboratory from 1999 to 2002, and Head of the Chemistry Department from 2006 to 2012. He became a member of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2002, and was made a Senior Member in 2012. In 2003 he was made the project leader for the creation of a European Laboratory for Very High Field NMR, which was completed in 2008, with the delivery of the world’s highest field high-resolution NMR spectrometer, operating at 1 GHz. He became a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the EPFL in June 2014. He is currently the Scientific Director of the Institut de Sciences Analytiques in Lyon, and Head of the Laboratoire de RMN of the ISIC at the EPFL. His research centres on the development of new NMR spectroscopy experiments to determine the atomic-level structure and dynamics of complex materials and molecular systems, to solve a range of problems across disciplines. He has received a series of awards and honors, including the CNRS Silver Medal in Chemistry in 2005, the EAS Award for Outstanding Achievement in Magnetic Resonance in 2009, the 2010 Luigi Sacconi Medal of the Italian Chemical Society, the 2012 AMPERE Prize, and the Grand Prix Charles-Léopold Meyer de l’Académie des Sciences. He is a Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance, an Honorary Member of the National Magnetic Resonance Society (NMRS) of India, and a Member of the Academia Europaea. He has served on various editorial boards and as chair of scientific committees and meetings. He is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

A. J. Rossini, L. Emsley and L. A. O'Dell. Dynamic nuclear polarisation enhanced N-14 overtone MAS NMR spectroscopy, in PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY CHEMICAL PHYSICS, vol. 16, num. 25, p. 12890-12899, 2014. L. Li, E. Abou-Hamad, D. H. Anjum, L. Zhou and P. V. Laveille et al. Well-defined mono(eta(3)-allyl)nickel complex MONi(eta(3)-C3H5) (M = Si or Al) grafted onto silica or alumina: a molecularly dispersed nickel precursor for syntheses of supported small size nickel nanoparticles, in CHEMICAL COMMUNICATIONS, vol. 50, num. 57, p. 7716-7719, 2014. M. Lelli, A. J. Rossini, G. Casano, O. Ouari and P. Tordo et al. Hydrophobic radicals embedded in neutral surfactants for dynamic nuclear polarization of aqueous environments at 9.4 Tesla, in CHEMICAL COMMUNICATIONS, vol. 50, num. 71, p. 10198-10201, 2014. M. K. Samantaray, E. Callens, E. Abou-Hamad, A. J. Rossini and C. M. Widdifield et al. WMe6 Tamed by Silica: Si-O-WMe5 as an Efficient, Well-Defined Species for Alkane Metathesis, Leading to the Observation of a Supported W-Methyl/Methylidyne Species, in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, vol. 136, num. 3, p. 1054-1061, 2014. G. L. Olsen, A. Lupulescu, J.-N. Dumez, L. Emsley and L. Frydman. Homonuclear Decoupling of H-1 Dipolar Interactions in Solids by means of Heteronuclear Recoupling, in ISRAEL JOURNAL OF CHEMISTRY, vol. 54, num. 1-2, SI, p. 154-162, 2014. M. E. Halse, J. Schlagnitweit and L. Emsley. High-Resolution H-1 Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy Using Windowed LG4 Homonuclear Dipolar Decoupling, in ISRAEL JOURNAL OF CHEMISTRY, vol. 54, num. 1-2, SI, p. 136-146, 2014. A. J. Rossini, C. M. Widdifield, A. Zagdoun, M. Lelli and M. Schwarzwaelder et al. Dynamic Nuclear Polarization Enhanced NMR Spectroscopy for Pharmaceutical Formulations, in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, vol. 136, num. 6, p. 2324-2334, 2014. L. Protesescu, A. J. Rossini, D. Kriegner, M. Valla and A. de Kergommeaux et al. Unraveling the Core-Shell Structure of Ligand-Capped Sn/SnOx Nanoparticles by Surface-Enhanced Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Mossbauer, and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopies, in ACS NANO, vol. 8, num. 3, p. 2639-2648, 2014. B. J. Blaise, C. Lopez, C. Vercherat, A. Lacheretz-Bernigaud and M. Bayet-Robert et al. Metabolic expressivity of human genetic variants: NMR metabotyping of MEN1 pathogenic mutants, in JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ANALYSIS, vol. 93, num. SI, p. 118-124, 2014. Y. J. Reddy, V. Agarwal, A. Lesage, L. Emsley and K. V. Ramanathan. Heteronuclear proton double quantum-carbon single quantum scalar correlation in solids, in JOURNAL OF MAGNETIC RESONANCE, vol. 245, p. 31-37, 2014. F. C. Strobridge, D. S. Middlemiss, A. J. Pell, M. Leskes and R. J. Clement et al. Characterising local environments in high energy density Li-ion battery cathodes: a combined NMR and first principles study of LiFexCo1-xPO4, in JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A, vol. 2, num. 30, p. 11948-11957, 2014. E. Barbet-Massin, M. Felletti, R. Schneider, S. Jehle and G. Communie et al. Insights into the Structure and Dynamics of Measles Virus Nucleocapsids by H-1-detected Solid-state NMR, in BIOPHYSICAL JOURNAL, vol. 107, num. 4, p. 941-946, 2014. E. Barbet-Massin, A. J. Pell, J. S. Retel, L. B. Andreas and K. Jaudzems et al. Rapid Proton-Detected NMR Assignment for Proteins with Fast Magic Angle Spinning, in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, vol. 136, num. 35, p. 12489-12497, 2014. M. P. Conley, A. J. Rossini, A. Comas-Vives, M. Valla and G. Casano et al. Silica-surface reorganization during organotin grafting evidenced by Sn-119 DNP SENS: a tandem reaction of gem-silanols and strained siloxane bridges, in PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY CHEMICAL PHYSICS, vol. 16, num. 33, p. 17822-17827, 2014. P. Wolf, M. Valla, A. J. Rossini, A. Comas-Vives and F. Nunez-Zarur et al. NMR Signatures of the Active Sites in Sn-beta Zeolite, in ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION, vol. 53, num. 38, p. 10179-10183, 2014. D. J. Kubicki, A. J. Rossini, A. Purea, A. Zagdoun and O. Ouari et al. Amplifying Dynamic Nuclear Polarization of Frozen Solutions by Incorporating Dielectric Particles, in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, vol. 136, num. 44, p. 15711-15718, 2014. D. J. Kubicki, A. J. Rossini, A. Purea, A. Zagdoun and O. Ouari et al. Amplifying Dynamic Nuclear Polarization of Frozen Solutions by Incorporating Dielectric Particles, in Journal Of The American Chemical Society, vol. 136, num. 44, p. 15711-15718, 2014.

D. Gajan, A. Bornet, B. Vuichoud, J. Milani and R. Melzi et al. Hybrid polarizing solids for pure hyperpolarized liquids through dissolution dynamic nuclear polarization, in Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, vol. 111, num. 41, p. 14693-14697, 2014.