17 Biomolecular NMR Spectroscopy and Structure Determination of DNA
Tony Cheung and Vasudevan Ramesh
School of Chemistry, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
17.1 Significance and Background
17.1.1 Analytical NMR: Discovery and Evolution
It may be fair to say that there is no other analytical technique that has had as dramatic an impact on several fields of science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Medicine) as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy since its discovery in 1945 [1]. The justification for this observation is clearly manifest in the award of four Nobel Prizes to scientists who have demonstrated the role of NMR in each of these sciences by their pioneering contributions [1].
The experimental evidence for the phenomenon of NMR in bulk matter was first provided in 1945, independently, by physicists Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell at Stanford and Harvard, respectively [1]. This was followed by intense activities in the 1960s and 1970s when the NMR phenomenon was successfully developed as a pulsed Fourier transform experimental technique with wide applications in Chemistry [2], culminating in the experimental demonstration of two‐dimensional (2D) NMR in 1976 by Richard Ernst at ETH, Zurich, that won him a Nobel Prize in 1991 [3]. Soon the exciting applications of NMR in chemistry were further advanced into biology and medicine (magnetic resonance imaging) in the 1980s resulting in the Nobel Prize to Paul Lauterbur (Illinois/Chicago) ...