Pulsed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

What we call “nuclear magnetic resonance” (NMR) was developed simultaneously but independently by Edward Purcell and Felix Bloch in 1946. The experimental method and theoretical interpretation they developed is now called “continuous-wave NMR” (CWNMR). A different experimental technique, called “pulsed NMR” (PNMR), was introduced in 1950 by Erwin Hahn. Pulsed NMR is used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Purcell and Bloch won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952 for NMR; more recently NMR was the subject of Nobel Prizes in Chemistry in 1991 and 2002. We have both NMR setups in the advanced labs: one is a variation of the CWNMR method, and the other is a pulsed NMR system.