Keith Prout died quite suddenly in September 2007 after a short illness.
Although he had been officially retired for several years, he was continuing an active research program with Nick Rees combining X-ray and NMR studies. X-ray structure analysis gives information about disorder and thermal vibrations in crystals. When combined with solid state NMR a complete dynamic profile of the crystal can be obtained.
Previous studies of penicillins, ansa-titanocenes and tri-ethyl phosphate molecular complexes with various hosts suggest a variety of molecular motions in addition to the ‘translation-libration-screw’ motion derived from the crystallographic atomic displacement parameters. He also studied order/disorder phase transitions, molecular motion and chiral selectivity in deoxycholic acid molecular complexes.