[2] Ernst was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his contributions towards the development of Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy[3] while at Varian Associates and ETH Zurich.

[13] Young Ernst was excited by what he found, and set about trying all conceivable reactions, some of which resulted in explosions that terrified his parents.

[9] He enrolled in the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich to study chemistry and received his diploma in 1957 as a “Diplomierter Ingenieur Chemiker''.

[10] Ernst entered Varian Associates as a scientist in 1963 and invented Fourier transform NMR, noise decoupling, and a number of other methods.

[17] Ernst led a research group dedicated to magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and was the director of the Physical Chemistry Laboratory at the ETH Zurich.

He participated in the development of medical magnetic resonance tomography, as well as the NMR structure determination of biopolymers in solution collaborating with Professor Kurt Wüthrich.

Here they told him he was being honoured "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy".

[28] In 2022, another movie about Richard R. Ernst premiered at the Cameo cinema in Winterthur, produced by Lukas Schwarzenbacher and Susanne Schmid.