Growing up, Dr. Clyde Allen Hutchison Jr. watched his mother use chemicals to develop photos, a pastime that fueled his interest in chemistry, said his son Robert.

Dr. Hutchison went on to become a University of Chicago chemistry professor who, according to university officials, was a pioneer in magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a technique that led to useful medical and technological insights.

"He was a very distinguished chemist," said professor Stuart A. Rice, who worked with Dr. Hutchison in the university's chemistry department. "He was very highly regarded on campus. He was a very good but very demanding teacher with high standards."

Dr. Hutchison, 92, of Chicago died of prostate cancer Monday, Aug. 29, at Montgomery Place Retirement Community in Chicago.

"Dr. Hutchison adopted electron magnetic resonance spectroscopy shortly after its invention," the university stated in a release. "Nuclear and electronic magnetic resonance spectroscopy eventually gave birth to magnetic resonance imaging, which is widely used in medicine and in studying the physics of solids."

Dr. Hutchison grew up in Alliance, Ohio. The son of a Methodist preacher, he learned to play the piano in church and excelled at it. But he was most curious about the process his mother used to develop photographs in her darkroom, his son said.

"He developed some of his scientific interest from her curiosity about how things worked," he said. "Most women at that time were not engaged in doing something like that, which was a process of chemistry."

Dr. Hutchison obtained a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Cedarville College in Ohio and wanted to work as a high school chemistry teacher, his son said. But he changed his mind because working at a high school also would have required him to teach some physical education classes, which he resisted.

"My father always said he was completely inept as an athlete," his son said. "He was forced to go and get a PhD and become a college professor."

Dr. Hutchison received a doctorate from Ohio State University in 1937.

A few years later, he worked on the Manhattan Project, helping the Army Corps of Engineers develop an atomic bomb, his son said.

Following one of his mentors, Dr. Hutchison began teaching at the University of Chicago in 1945. He was chairman of the department from 1959 to 1963, his son said.

He became known for pressing students to be as precise as possible when conducting scientific research.

"He was very careful in the way he used language," his son said. "And he expected his students to be very careful also. As a scientist you have to design experiments that will give you an answer to a question. The question has to be specific enough so you can get an answer."

Dr. Hutchison retired from teaching in 1983 but continued to keep office hours at the university, his son said.

He was editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics from 1953 to 1959 and lectured in many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union, China, Japan and New Zealand.

He was a J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford's Clarendon Laboratory in 1981 and 1982. He was the winner of the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry from the American Chemical Society.

Other survivors include another son, Clyde A. Hutchison; a daughter, Sarah Hutchison Dunn; a sister, Frances Bray; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Nov. 13, in Montgomery Place Retirement Community, 5550 South Shore Drive.

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