George K. Radda

Sir George Charles Radda (; 9 June 1936 – 13 September 2024) was a Hungarian-British chemist.

Biography Radda was born in Hungary on 9 June 1936. In 1957, he attended Merton College, Oxford, to study chemistry and worked on electrophilic aromatic substitution with Richard Norman and Jeremy Knowles, having set aside an earlier interest in literary criticism. 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.

In 1982 Radda published work concerning the relationship between deoxygenated haemoglobin and the NMR signal.

From 1996 until his retirement in 2003, Radda was Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council in the UK. In 2009 he was appointed chairman of the Biomedical Research Council in Singapore.

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

In addition, he was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society and was a British Heart Foundation Professor of Molecular Cardiology. In 1998, he was an inaugural Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was also awarded many distinguished prizes throughout his scientific career. He was an Honorary Member of the American Heart Association

In 2018 he was awarded the Hungarian Corvin Chain. This is the second highest Hungarian state decoration and is awarded to persons who have made an outstanding contribution to the improvement of Hungarian public thought, science and culture.