Abstract
The saga of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), initiated by the founding fathers Rabi, Bloch and Purcell, continues uninterrupted and flourishing. At the crossroads of physics, chemistry (Ernst), structural biology (Wüthrich) and medical imaging (Lauterbur, Mansfield), NMR continues to penetrate all scientific fields, with recent breakthroughs in methodology, instrumentation, signal theory and potential applications serving as anchor points for multiple communities, including industry. The result is original and fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations. An example of such collaborations is NMR Crystallography, which harmoniously combines the respective strengths of radiation diffraction, first-principles calculations and NMR.
The central problem with NMR, however, remains its intrinsically low sensitivity. Relentlessly, researchers from all walks of life are coming up with increasingly sophisticated solutions to circumvent what can be considered the "last major problem" in NMR.
In the course of this lecture, we will cover all the above topics, with a particular focus on examples related to heritage materials.
