Brian Heaton was born in the Lake District (north west of England) from where many Inorganic Chemistry Professors originate. He was one of Professor Joe Chatt's first research students at the University of Sussex (1964-67) and then moved to the University of Kent at Canterbury where he developed his multinuclear NMR expertise. In 1985, he became Grant Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Liverpool and has been one of the pioneers in the development of High Pressure NMR measurements to spectroscopically characterise intermediates in the catalytic cycle of homogeneous transition metal catalysed reactions; he has recently reported only the second example of the complete spectroscopic characterisation of all the intermediates in a catalytic cycle, viz the Pd-catalysed methoxycarbonylation of ethene.