He successfully applied for a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship, and so sailed from Liverpool on the MV Britannic in September 1931, en route to Ann Arbor.
Having gained a Carnegie Fellowship, Sutherland was able to return to Cambridge, this time to Lennard-Jones’s group where he worked with W G Penney on trying to understand the reasons for the very weak Raman spectra of hydrazine and hydrogen peroxide.
Sutherland then successfully applied for the Stokes Studentship tenable at Pembroke College, and was elected to a Staff Fellowship the following year.
This initially involved locating and disabling unexploded bombs, and later the use of infrared spectroscopy to help in the analysis of the petrol being used by the Germans in their fighters and bombers.
It took a considerable time to build the group he wanted, but he was able to develop his interest in the biochemical and biophysical applications of infrared spectroscopy.
[5] During his period at the NPL he successfully obtained additional staff and facilities for the Laboratory, to make up for the relative lack of investment since the war.
He appointed John Pople to head up a new basics physics division, who was joined by David Whiffen, Keith McLauchlan,[6] and Ray Freeman who together developed the use of nuclear magnetic resonance.