Nuclear magnetic resonance was developed in 1945 by 2 American scientists, Felix Bloch (1905-1983) and Edward M. Purcell (1912-1997), who were awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in physics for their work.

When was NMR first used?

The first U.S. patent for NMR machines was made on July 24, 1951, by Russell H. Varian. Varian, the owner of Varian Associates, later developed the first NMR unit, dubbed NMR HR-30, the following year. In the 1950s, research began on using NMR for data acquisition on natural gas.

Where was NMR invented?

Credit for the discovery of NMR goes to Isidor Isaac Rabi, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944. The Purcell group at Harvard University and the Bloch group at Stanford University independently developed NMR spectroscopy in the late 1940s and early 1950s.