Anthony Angelo Ribeiro

DURHAM – Anthony “Tony” Angelo Ribeiro, age 72, died at Duke University Hospital on September 3, 2021. He was born on October 1, 1948 to the late Olga Maria Theresa Rosario and Marcus Augusto Ribeiro.

Tony spent the first part of his life in Hong Kong as part of the Macanese community in what was then a British colony. He immigrated to the United States with his parents and siblings in 1964 and settled in San Francisco. There, he attended Sacred Heart and the University of San Francisco. Tony continued on to graduate school at the University of California San Diego, where he earned a PhD in chemistry. While at UCSD, Tony met Barbara Jo Martinek and the two married in 1978. They welcomed a daughter, Alyssa Marie, in 1981.

Tony’s area of scientific expertise was Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. He worked in labs at Stanford University and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences before beginning a position at Duke University in 1984 as Operations Manager for the NMR Spectroscopy Center. There he helped to build a facility with instrumentation used by countless academic and industrial researchers. He regularly traveled to scientific conferences to share his work, and particularly enjoyed ENC meetings at Asilomar on the California coast. Across his 47-year career he published over 100 scientific papers. Tony retired in 2018.

Outside of work, Tony traveled widely and enjoyed eating all types of food. He helped care for a long line of family dogs, liked listening to the radio and watching television, and followed sports closely, especially college basketball. He devoured crossword puzzles and loved a good deal most of all.

Anthony is survived by his wife Barbara, his daughter Alyssa and son-in-law Alex Fore, his sisters Virginia Small and Mandi Ribeiro, and several nieces and nephews and their children. Anthony was preceded in death by his parents Olga and Marcus Ribeiro and brother Robert Ribeiro.

Services will be held on Friday, September 10, 2021 at Hall-Wynne; visitation at 9am and funeral at 10am. All are welcome to attend.

Tony cared deeply about feeding people, so in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Durham Branch of the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina.

The Ribeiro family is under the care of Hall-Wynne Funeral Service. Online condolences: www.hallwynne.com – select obituaries.