What is Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy?
NMR is a spectroscopic technique which uses electromagnetic radiation and magnetic fields to determine the structure of organic compounds. Radio-frequency radiation is used to stimulate nuclei present within the molecule and from the information we obtain from doing this we can very accurately determine where the carbon atoms are located and where hydrogen atoms are located. The effect was first noticed in 1902 by P. Zeeman, a physicist, who won a Nobel Prize for noticing that nuclei of certain atoms behave strangely in a magnetic field. Fifty years later F. Bloch and E. Purcell, both physicists put this idea to good use by constructing the first NMR spectrometer. They too received a Nobel Prize for this work.
