NMR Pioneer Josef Dadok Dies at 98

Carnegie Mellon University Emeritus Professor Josef ("Joe") Dadok passed away on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, in Bloomington, Indiana, from complications of cancer. He was 98 years old.

Dadok was born in Detmarovice, Czechoslovakia, to Ferdinand and Barbora (Seberova) Dadok. He was a social, engaging optimist, who always said he was "born on Sunday," meaning very lucky.  A veteran and survivor of WWII, he became an electrical engineer, working in instrumentation at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

Dadok was an early pioneer in the field of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and was referred to as the "founder of NMR in Czechoslovakia." He built the country's first NMR spectrometers in the 1950s and 60s, a time when only the United States and Japan were producing commercial NMR equipment. Before trade restrictions were lifted in the 1990s, Czechoslovakia was the leading producer of NMR equipment in Eastern Europe.

In 1967, Carnegie Mellon Professor Aksel Bothner-By invited him to serve as a one year visiting fellow at the NMR facility at Carnegie Mellon University, which was newly formed by a merger between the Mellon Institute and the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Dadok's wife and two sons visited the United States in June 1968. While the family was traveling, the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia. The family chose to stay in the United States, and Dadok became a full-time fellow at Carnegie Mellon's NMR facility.

Dadok continued his research at Carnegie Mellon, where he and Bothner-By constructed a multinuclear NMR spectrometer in the late 1960s, equipped with a superconducting magnet operating at 250 MHz.

In 1976, Dadok was named Technical Director of the National NIH NMR Facility for Biomedical Studies at Carnegie Mellon and a full professor. Bothner-By and Dadok collaborated with Intermagnetics General Corporation in 1976 to lead the team that built the first 600 MHz spectrometer. Housed at Carnegie Mellon, the 600 MHz spectrometer was the world's most powerful system for many years and was used for leading-edge chemistry and biology research.

During his career, Dadok received 5 patents, authored 40 publications and delivered over 50 papers and other presentations. He retired in 1997 and enjoyed a long retirement.

In 2013, the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) in Brno, Czech Republic, named its national NMR center after Dadok. The Josef Dadok National NMR Centre focuses on using nuclear NMR to study the atomic structure of biologically significant molecules. During the dedication of the laboratory, which carries his name, he was awarded two honorary Ph.Ds. for his lifetime achievements from two universities in Brno — Masaryk University and his alma mater the Technical University of Brno. That same year he delivered a talk at Carnegie Mellon titled "My 50 Years in Scientific Instrumentation — Mostly NMR."

Dadok is survived by his sons, Jiri and Ludek, daughters-in-law Carolyn Begley and Debra (Beauchamp) Dadok, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He is predeceased by his wife, Marie (Janouskova) Dadok, to whom he was married for 72 years, and he is interred next to her at the Clear Creek Cemetery, Bloomington, Indiana.