REVIEW: The Discovery of Magnetic Resonance in the Context of 20th Century Science: Biographies and Bibliography. III: First Decades in the Soviet Union Following the Discovery of Magnetic Resonances in Matter

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Alexander V. Kessenikh¹ and Vasily V. Ptushenko^2,3,a*

¹Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 125315 Moscow, Russia

²Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119992 Moscow, Russia

³Emanuel Institute of Biochemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334 Moscow, Russia

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: December 25, 2025; Revised: December 25, 2025; Accepted: December 30, 2025

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To some extent, fortune favored announcement of the ERP discovery: Zavoisky’s paper was published fairly promptly in both Russian and in English in 1945 and thus fortunately slipped through the tiny gap between the two epochs – just in time before the Iron Curtain descended across Europe. Thus, scientists beyond the borders of the USSR became aware of the discovery and were in fact the first to cite and acknowledge Zavoisky’s work. In 1944-early 1945, Zavoisky delivered his paper at a series of seminars attended by a number of renowned physicists, chemists, chemical physicists, biophysicists, and geophysicists from the USSR’s best scientific institutions. Nevertheless, for nearly a decade EPR had been of interest almost exclusively to physicists who belonged to Zavoisky’s school he established in Kazan. Beyond Kazan, A. I. Shalnikov, P. L. Kapitsa, and Ya. K. Syrkin appeared to have been the only scientists in the Soviet Union who immediately recognized promise of the EPR discovery. Moreover, there were the works of Syrkin’s student L. A. Blumenfeld and his friend V. V. Voevodsky that paved the way for the EPR method to spread beyond Kazan and physics, into chemistry and biology research all across the USSR. After late 1950s, the number of publications on EPR in Soviet journals grew exponentially. Research groups studying magnetic resonance phenomena were established in many other scientific institutions. In the present paper, those groups and their studies, as well as scientific instrumentation for EPR and NMR spectroscopy in the USSR are briefly discussed.

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KEY WORDS: Ya. K. Syrkin, L. A. Blumenfeld, V. V. Voevodsky, chemical and biological radiofrequency spectroscopy, acoustic resonance, spin relaxation, nuclear polarization, spin chemistry, scientific instrumentation

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297925604502

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