The first successful nuclear magnetic resonance experiments in solid (parrafin wax) and liquid phases (water) were carried out independently at the end of 1945 respectively by Purcell, Torrey and Pound and by Bloch, Hansen and Packard.

Felix BlochFelix Bloch is now remembered largely for his macroscopic phenomenological description of the magnetic properties of the atomic nucleus. This allowed him to develop a theory of nuclear induction which is particularly well suited to the study of transient effects, at the same time it is broadly consistent with a quantum theoretical treatment for systems in a steady state. Bloch's method was to derive expressions for the real and imaginary parts of the nuclear magnetic susceptibility. The Bloch Equations must still be studied by every serious student of NMR or EMR, they apply as well to the nucleus as to the electron. In recent years they have achieved even more prominence with the development of NMR based medical scanners (MRI)- see the selective slice simulation applet!

 Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1952 "for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith"

Zavoisky was overlooked, and EMR missed out!