ABSTRACT
Following five productive and inspiring years in California, my return to Zurich in spring 1968 felt like being thrown back into the Dark Ages. I had nothing I needed. I felt isolated at ETH, I had no support and the equipment I had at my disposal was antiquated and totally unfit for my work. The one ray of light was my frequent exchange of letters with Wes Anderson. In a message sent just two weeks after arriving back at the end of April, I pulled no punches in letting him know how bad things were at ETH: “I feel that there is a good challenge to try to form a productive NMR group,” I wrote. “One feels pretty much isolated and does not know where to start, it is completely different from the start at Varian. One is not even introduced to anybody and does not know what the neighbour is doing, except that he is building some kind of a complicated instrument and probably does not know what to use it for.”
