[6] In 1957, he attended Merton College, Oxford, to study chemistry and worked on electrophilic aromatic substitution with Richard Norman and Jeremy Knowles,[7] having set aside an earlier interest in literary criticism.

[2][8] His early work was concerned with the development and use of fluorescent probes for the study of structure and function of membranes and enzymes.

He became interested in using spectroscopic methods including nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study complex biological material.

This resulted in the installation of a magnet large enough to accommodate the whole human body for NMR investigations in 1983 at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

[12][13] Radda received numerous prestigious awards and honours for his pioneering efforts in using spectroscopic techniques for metabolic studies, including a Buchanan Medal in 1987.