Amid a room packed with recognized academics, , research professor and director of Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 , steps to the podium: 鈥淲elcome to the 2013 Carnegie Mellon Pittcon Lecture and our guest speaker鈥檚 second celebration.鈥� The first one took place in the Czech Republic. This one is in Pittsburgh.
A video on the screen beside Bier highlights a line of men wielding scissors and cutting a ribbon, with attention focused on the one in the middle. Bier introduces this man as 鈥渁 great friend and teacher.鈥�
An unassuming gentleman with graying hair and an infectious smile takes the microphone. Lights dim as he clicks to his first slide. 鈥淚 was born in a small village in Czechoslovakia in 1926,鈥� says, his quiet voice revealing a European accent. 鈥淣ow I must admit I am a little older than you think,鈥� says the 87-year-old Carnegie Mellon emeritus professor of chemistry, who looks 20 years younger. He continues. 鈥淢y father was a coalminer. 鈥︹�澨�
A young Josef is growing up in D每etmarovice, a village near the Polish border. In 1937, with his father unemployed in the economic downturn, the family lives off a small piece of inherited land, planting and keeping livestock. His sisters do domestic work. Josef delivers newspapers.听
As the baby of the family, he learned early how to read from his siblings, and he鈥檇 entered kindergarten at age three. On this special day in the fifth grade, his teacher unveils an exciting demonstration鈥攁 steam engine. Josef begs to borrow the machine. The teacher relents, and he scurries home to duplicate it with scrap. Days later, ready for testing, he heats the steam with a candle and 鈥� it doesn鈥檛 work. The disappointed boy can鈥檛 yet know that this is one of the few machines he will build that won鈥檛.听
Soon the teacher recommends her bright student for the advanced academic school called gymnasium. He鈥檚 happy to bike the four miles each way and befriends brothers from a well-to-do family. He spends a memorable day at their well-appointed home, not playing, but intently watching a repairman fix their elaborate radio, components filling his hands.
On another day, they share books from their library. One book, The Small Edison, illustrates how to build electric instruments. Dadok thinks he can do it. Persuading his mother to give him money to buy a battery, he constructs his first electric motor. This time, when he connects the battery, it works.
His childhood is about to change. In 1938, Poland takes power, and he鈥檚 sent to a gymnasium taught in Polish, not his Czech dialect. The next year, the Germans march in, and he鈥檚 sent back to mainstream grade school鈥攖aught in German. Dadok takes a neighbor鈥檚 used schoolbooks and teaches himself English. When possible, he helps his brother fix bicycles, and at age 16 builds his first tube radio.听
In 1944, 18-year-old Dadok is forced to enter the German army. Within months he lets himself be captured by the British and works his way into the Czechoslovak forces in England. He serves as a tank radio operator, soaking up the 鈥渢raining.鈥�
In the darkened room, slides flash by onscreen. Dadok鈥檚 matter-of-fact delivery belies the black-and-white tumult pictured. Crowds cheering. Soldiers marching. A group of 50 impossibly young soldiers, posed in uniform before shipping back to home. Dadok points himself out, standing on the left.
鈥淚 was born on Sunday鈥攍ucky. It鈥檚 what my wife always says whenever something works for me,鈥� remarks Dadok. 鈥淪o, of course, I didn鈥檛 go for the second time to the front. The captain said, 鈥楶rivate Dadok, would you like to stay here as an instructor?鈥� You can guess my answer.鈥� The audience laughs as he smiles broadly.
When the war ends in 1945, Dadok returns to Czechoslovakia, this time to finish the five remaining years of his advanced education鈥攊n one year. He then moves on to the Brno University of Technology to study .
Click. Another slide, a crowd holding flags. It鈥檚 the 1948 Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. Dadok, who doesn鈥檛 join the Communist Party, is allowed to complete his studies only because he has excellent grades and a working-class father.
His professor noticed his interest in solving problems and hires him to build measuring instruments for RF quality of glass, used to build short wave transmitter tubes by the Czech electronic industry.
When he earns his master鈥檚 degree in 1951, he becomes an assistant professor. But with another political purge that year, he is terminated. 鈥淭hey said I would not teach the theory of electricity in the spirit of Marx Leninism,鈥� he remarks.
At age 25, Dadok is sent as a punishment to work at Tesla-Brno, a state-owned electro-technical company. Having been 鈥渂orn on Sunday,鈥� however, within two years he finds his way back to academia with the help of a former professor鈥攏ow a Czech army general. He鈥檚 given a position at the Institute for Scientific Instruments of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Brno. There he founds the department of radio frequency spectroscopy. It鈥檚 a new technology he鈥檇 studied from English scientific journals. Within a few years, he begins work on the project that will dominate his career鈥攏uclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.
NMR allows scientists to understand the physical and chemical properties of molecular structures in previously unknown ways鈥斺�渢o see inside the molecule,鈥� Dadok says. He knows it will lead to advances in confirming known substances and synthesizing useful new compounds. In simple terms, the principle behind NMR is that the nuclei of some atoms spin and they have 鈥渕agnetic moment.鈥� When placed in a magnetic field, their spins line up. Subjected then to radio waves, they respond at characteristic frequencies, affected by the number and types of surrounding atoms and their electrons. In spectroscopy, these frequencies can be recorded, processed, and plotted, allowing for identification of molecular structure.听
Unfortunately, though Dadok can read the published studies, he has no way of examining an actual instrument, made only in the United States and Japan. Purchase is out of the question. The mere term 鈥渘uclear鈥� violates the trade embargo against the Communist Bloc nation. Not unlike his 12-year-old self, Dadok decides to build one.听
But again, a roadblock. The Hungarian revolution of 1956 spurs political 鈥渢ightening,鈥� and in 1958 Dadok is fired as the result of a political purge. Three days later, he鈥檚 told he can continue his research, just not as the head of his own department. By 1961, he has both his prior position and his first usable 40 MHz machine. He builds a series of instruments, up to 80 MHz, for use at Czech academic institutions. He eventually transfers the technological knowledge to Tesla-Brno for manufacturing, and the company becomes the dominant supplier for Eastern Europe.
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Click. A slide shows a young man fiddling with a knob on a spectrometer board. 鈥淗ere, I pretend to measure something,鈥� describes Dadok. 鈥淛oe, you鈥檝e got your hand on the wrong knob,鈥� yells a friend in the crowd; the room joins Dadok in laughter.听
He describes how a U.S. company developed the first NMR spectrometer using a superconducting magnet, increasing resolution and sensitivity by doubling the operating frequency to 200 MHz. Determined to learn more, Dadok comes to the United States for an experimental NMR conference, co-organized by a renowned 麻豆村 professor, Aksel Bothner-By. Dadok laser-points to a slide of the Mellon Institute, majestic columns soaring, and says, 鈥淭he conference I attended here changed my life. I met five scientists who became my friends and who strongly influenced my future career.鈥� Bothner-By later invites him to Carnegie Mellon for a yearlong fellowship to develop a multinuclear NMR spectrometer with a superconducting magnet from Westinghouse.听
鈥淲hat else can you wish for?鈥� Dadok says. 鈥淎nd the design was so much easier in the U.S. because I could buy components. In Czechoslovakia, we had to build almost everything ourselves.鈥� Dadok describes that year in Pittsburgh as his team built 鈥渢he first 250 MHz machine in the world. And I was able to learn a lot about the superconducting magnets.鈥澨�
Click, click. Family vacation slides flash by. An old car, which he says he couldn鈥檛 have dreamed of in Czechoslovakia. Mickey Mouse. He explains that he was in Pittsburgh without his family until later in the year, during 鈥淧rague Spring,鈥� when the political climate eased. His wife and two sons are able to come for a month鈥檚 tour of the United States. 鈥淯nfortunately,鈥� he says, 鈥渋t was not a good precursor.鈥� The Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.听
Now age 41, Dadok extends his visa, as well as his family鈥檚, planning to wait things out. Meanwhile, he is made a full-time fellow at 麻豆村. He expands his knowledge from analog to digital programming as they acquire a minicomputer Sigma 5 made by Xerox. Dadok develops a pioneering technique in 1972 to speed the acquisition of NMR data and increase the instrument鈥檚 effective sensitivity. Since most often it uses rapid frequency scan, it became known as Rapid Scan Correlation NMR. The 250 MHz machine, meanwhile, becomes the workhorse of the Mellon Institute facility, largely funded by the . So many researchers come from across the country to use the instrument that a small bedroom is maintained in the building for those staying to conduct experiments.听听
In 1972, with their visas expired and the political climate unchanged, the Dadoks decide to stay permanently in the United States. In absentia, they are sentenced to prison time in Czechoslovakia. They will be unable to return until after the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the Communist Party is overthrown. Meanwhile, hundreds of publications are generated through the work performed at Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 NMR facility. And for a few years, Dadok is the only Carnegie Mellon professor to conduct courses on analog and digital signal processing. In 1976 he is named technical director of the NMR facility.
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Always 鈥減ushing the frequency鈥� for improvement, Dadok and his team develop an IR-100 award-winning 600 MHz machine, built with the use of a non persistent magnetic and helium recycling system. The new instrument increases the resolution and sensitivity of complicated spectra and remains the only such instrument in the world for years.听
鈥淭oday, the most powerful NMR spectrometer we have here is a high-end 600 MHz,鈥� Bier says later. 鈥淎nd we were using the same frequency decades ago with the one that Joe built. His team was on the cutting edge of NMR technology.鈥�
After 30 productive years at 麻豆村, Dadok retires in 1997 but maintains his office at the Mellon Institute. One day in 2007, a surprise visitor arrives. Michael Garwood, of the University of Minnesota鈥檚 Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, is in town giving a seminar. He鈥檚 asked to meet Josef Dadok. Shaking Dadok鈥檚 hand, he says, 鈥淛oe, you鈥檙e my hero. You鈥檙e an amazing guy, coming up with this so long ago!鈥澨�
Garwood has developed technology based on Dadok鈥檚 Rapid Scan Correlation technique and its ability to capture quickly decaying signals. They鈥檙e using it for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Discovered in the 1970s, MRI scans didn鈥檛 come into widespread usage for years. Useful for imaging soft tissues like the brain and heart, Garwood and his team have adapted Dadok鈥檚 technique to the MRI, allowing them to image hard tissue, like bone and teeth, and eliminating the dangers of ionizing radiation associated with the X-ray. 鈥淛oe was 35 years ahead of his time,鈥� marvels Garwood.听
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Click. Another slide shows Dadok poised to cut a ceremonial ribbon. It pictures the inauguration of the European Union鈥檚 new NMR facility in Brno, a huge facility with five powerful, high-field NMR spectrometers, up to 950 MHz, one of the most advanced in Central and Eastern Europe. Recognized as the founder of NMR in Czechoslovakia, Dadok is the guest of honor at the January 2013 dedication of the new Josef Dadok National NMR Centre.
That ends his slide presentation. No more jokes from the crowd. Just a burst of applause.
Melissa Silmore (TPR鈥�85) is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to this magazine.
Related Links:
National NMR Center in Czech Republic Named for Carnegie Mellon emeritus Professor Josef Dadok
