Nuclear magnetic resonance – from molecules to man

Abstract

Initial observations of the physical phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) date back to the late 1940s. In the following two decades high-resolution NMR in solution became an indispensible analytical tool in chemistry, and solid state NMR had an increasingly important role in physics. Some of the potentialities of the method for investigations of complex biological systems had also long been anticipated, and initial experiments with biological specimens were described already 30 years ago. In practice, however, biological applications of NMR have become really attractive only during the last decade, following revolutionary advances in NMR instrumentation and the methodology for their use. NMR projects in biology and medicine now include studies of biomacromolecular structure and function, work on biological membranes, in vivo studies of biochemical processes, and imaging of macroscopic objects. Because of imminent practical applications in medical diagnosis and thanks to extensive coverage by the popular news media, interest in some of the recent developments spreads far beyond the scientific community, making NMR a widely popular field.