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The measurement of nuclear and electron magnetic resonance on bulk materials was made possible by Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell and in 1952 they shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. Until then, magnetic resonance was a measurable phenomena in which atoms were shot through a magnet as a beam. This was the work of Rabi. Therefore, the Nobel Prize quality in Bloch and Purcell's work was not in the theory of magnetic resonance …

…top spins about its central axis. This is quite easily visualized in terms of the particle nature of the nucleus; it is less easily visualized in terms of the wave picture, which by now we know is another face of nature that is manifested in the atomic/molecular realm. Spin of nuclei is similar to electron spin. Examples of atoms whose nuclei spin are hydrogen, fluorine, the 13 isotope of carbon, and the 15 isotope of nitrogen.