Article

ISSN 0006-2979, Biochemistry (Moscow), 2025, Vol. 90, Suppl. 2, pp. S432-S443 © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2025.

S432

REVIEW

The Discovery of Magnetic Resonance

in the Context of 20th Century Science:

Biographies and Bibliography.

II: Magnetic Resonance Discovery

in the Mirror of the Nobel Prize Award

Alexander V. Kessenikh

and Vasily V. Ptushenko

2,3,a

Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences,

125315 Moscow, Russia

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

119992 Moscow, Russia

Emanuel Institute of Biochemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences,

119334 Moscow, Russia

e-mail: ptush@belozersky.msu.ru

Received December 25, 2025

Revised December 25, 2025

Accepted December 30, 2025

Abstract— In this chapter, Zavoisky’ history of Nobel Prize nominations is discussed. Once his name became

publicly known after a decade of obscurity due to his involvement in the Soviet nuclear program, Zavoisky

began to be proposed for the Prize by his international peers. C.  J.  Gorter, Zavoisky’s competition in his

search for EPR, was the first to nominate him, in 1958. On the Soviet side, the first nomination came from

the physicist I.  M.  Frank, in 1959. In the next decade, Zavoisky’s most persistent nominee was Croatian-Swiss

chemist L.  Ružička. The period covered herein ends in 1966, as information for later years was not yet

disclosed by the Nobel Organization at the time of writing the original publication.

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297925604496

Keywords: Gorter, Frank, Ružička

# Deceased.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

INTRODUCTION

The annual Nobel Prize award ceremony is by no

means a pinnacle of scientific success or importance;

for over 120 years, only briefly interrupted (main-

ly by the World Wars), it has undoubtedly been the

most prestigious event in the world of natural sci-

ence. A nomination for the Nobel Prize is definitely

a strong argument in favor of significance of a sci-

entific discovery, even if it only reflects judgement

of scientific community, rather than its objective sci-

entific value.

It is common knowledge that E.  K.  Zavoisky’s dis-

covery of electron paramagnetic resonance was never

recognized by the Nobel Prize. Unfairness of this cir-

cumstance was as obvious to the world scientific com-

munity, as it was to their Soviet colleagues. To this,

for example, speaks the ISMAR Prize conferred to

Zavoisky in 1977, posthumously. A.  Abragam, at one

of the international fora, “toasted two “fussy ladies”,

the Swedish Academy and the Soviet Academy of Sci-

ences, urging both to right the historical wrong by

giving the Nobel Prize to E.  K.  Zavoisky for his dis-

covery of paramagnetic resonance, and by electing

S.  A.  Altshuler to the Academy of Sciences” [1].

There have been numerous discussions as to why

the history was unfair to Zavoisky and his work, an

assortment of hypotheses suggested, including those

of political and ethical nature. N.  E.  Zavoiskaya of-

fered her prospective on the matter in her funda-

mental monograph [2]. In this book, she has gathered

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BIOCHEMISTRY (Moscow) Vol. 90 Suppl. 2 2025

anunparalleled collection of materials on the discov-

ery, its history, its path to recognition by the scien-

tific community in the USSR and in the world, and

its track record in terms of the Nobel Prize nomina-

tions. In her research, Zavoiskaya was guided, among

other things, by the archival documents found by

A.  M.  Bloch [3], an outstanding Russian historian spe-

cializing in the history of Science, specifically history

of the Nobel Prize awards. In particular, Zavoiskaya

wrote in her book that, according to the Soviet ar-

chives, his colleagues in the USSR nominated Zavoisky

for the world’s most prestigious scientific award sev-

eral times. By the time the book came out (2007),

however, it had not yet been 50 years since the coun-

try and the world came to recognize the outstanding

scientist and his work. In other words, the 50-years

restriction period for the Nobel Prize nominee names

disclosure was not over yet, and, therefore, it was

impossible to know whether Zavoisky was proposed

for the Prize on other occasions or not. One decade

passed since 2007, and new documents came to

light [4]. Below is an overview of the archival mate-

rials made available by the Nobel organization as of

2018, in the context of the discovery of EPR.

IN THE MIRROR OF THE NOBEL PRIZE AWARD

Let us begin with a quick account of “The Nobel

Relay” starring F.  Bloch and E.  M.  Purcell. Both were

first nominated almost immediately after each pub-

lished his pioneering research, F.  Bloch– in 1948, and

E.  M.  Purcell – in 1949. Given that the papers came

out in January, 1946, and candidates for the Nobel

Prize 1948 were due to be submitted to the Nobel

Committees no later than in January, 1948, the world

scientific community had less than 2 years to recog-

nize the importance of both their works. Interesting-

ly, it all started with C.  Gorter and G.  Wentzel, who

submitted F. Bloch as a candidate for the Nobel Prize

in 1948. In 1949, van  Vleck nominated both F.  Bloch

and E.  Purcell. In 1950, A.  Kastler and S.  Quimby fol-

lowed suite. In addition, W.  Lamb, in the same year,

proposed F.  Bloch alone for the Prize. In 1951, two

nominators submitted the names of the two of them,

and two – that of F.  Bloch unaccompanied. In 1952,

the year Bloch and Purcell shared the Prize, there

were three persons who nominated Bloch and Pur-

cell, and four more who chose F.  Bloch on his own.

Among the nominators were I.  Rabi, who had discov-

ered molecular beam resonance method just before

the World War  II, E.  Fermi, K.  Siegbahn, M.  von  Laue,

and others. During the five years (for E.  M.  Purcell –

four years) before Purcell and Bloch were given the

Nobel Prize, F.  Bloch was a nominee 18 times, and

E.  M.  Purcell – 10 times. It is noteworthy that no

other scientist engaged in the magnetic resonance re-

lated research was nominated for the Prize in those

years. C.  Gorter and A.  Kastler were first nominated

in 1956, B.  Bleaney – in 1957, while A.  Abragam and

N.  Bloembergen – in 1960. There was only one ex-

ception – J.  van  Vleck who was first proposed for the

Nobel Prize in 1951, his next nomination to happen

ten years later, in 1961.

Therefore, it took a surprisingly short and easy

effort, by Nobel standards, for Purcell and Bloch to

“take the gold”. This effort, however, was made by

the most renowned scientists of the time.

E.  K.  Zavoisky, according to the documents made

available by the Nobel organization as of 2018,

has “the Nobel history” no less interesting or rich.

The Nomination Archive documents reveal that his

name was proposed for the Prize every single year

in the period of 1958 through 1966; a summary of

Zavoisky’s nominations is given in Table  1 (data for

later years had not yet been disclosed as of 2018

In total, in those years, he was nominated on 17  (!)

occasions by different nominators. Twice he was cho-

sen for the Chemistry Prize (the other 15 nominations

were all for the Physics Prize). Furthermore, only five

of the nominations came from the Soviet Union, the

other twelve coming from other countries. Among

his international nominators were: Cornelius Gorter

(the Netherlands), he proposed Zavoisky’s name four

times in different years; Leopold Ružička (Switzer-

land) – Zavoisky was his nominee five times; Erik

Rudberg (Sweden), Joseph Weiss (United Kingdom)

and Arne Ölander (Sweden). In the political language

of that time, none of the international nominators be-

longed to the Soviet bloc, that is E.  K.  Zavoisky was

obviously held in high regard by the scientific world

and their choice was not politically motivated.

On the Soviet side, as of 1966, E.  K.  Zavoisky was

nominated for the Nobel Prize on three occasions: in

1959 (by I.  M.  Frank), in 1964 (by A.  P.  Alexandrov,

L.  A.  Artsimovich, N.  N.  Semenov, and I.  E.  Tamm),

and in 1966 (by A.  M.  Prokhorov and B.  P.  Konstan-

tinov).

C.  J.  Gorter, who first nominated Zavoisky for the

Nobel Prize in Physics in 1958, was the early bird.

In the same year, J.  Weiss proposed Zavoisky for the

Chemistry Prize. Why was it that E.  K.  Zavoisky and

his work started to draw attention beginning with the

year 1958? Although it is only a hypothesis, it looks

like the impetus came from the Lenin Prize awarded

to E.  K.  Zavoisky a year before. The Prize, in terms

As of 2023, when this monograph was translated into English, data for the years up to 1970 was disclosed. Table thus

includes data for the period of 1958-1970, although herein the period of 1967-1970 is scarcely discussed.

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Table 1. Zavoisky’s Nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physics and in Chemistry for the period of 1958-1970

Year Nomination Nominator

The prize to be

shared with

Laureates

(Number of nominations)

Zavoisky’s Co-Nominees

1958 physics C.  J. Gorter –

P.  A.  Cherenkov,

I.  M.  Frank,

I.  Y.  Tamm

(50) H.  A.  Bethe  (1967),

D. J.  Bohm, O.  Chamberlain  (1959),

S.  A.  Goudsmit,

M.  Goeppert  Mayer (1963),

A.  Kastler  (1966), P.  Kapitsa  (1978),

L.  D.  Landau  (1962),

A.  Landé, L.  Néel  (1970),

L.  Onsager  (1968), J.  H  Oort,

I.  Prigogine  (1977), E.  Segrè  (1959),

C.  H.  Townes  (1964),

G.  E.  Uhlenbeck, E.  P.  Wigner  (1963)

1958 chemistry J.  J.  Weiss – F.  Sanger

(85) M.  Calvin  (1961),

M.  Goeppert  Mayer,

J.  Heyrovský  (1959), C.  K.  Ingold,

S.  Ochoa  (1959), L.  Onsager,

V.  Prelog  (1975), E.  Segrè,

R.  B.  Woodward  (1965)

1959 physics

I.  M.  Frank,

L.  Ružička

–

E.  Segrè,

O. Chamberlain

(62) H.  A.  Bethe, B.  Bleaney,

N.  N.  Bogoljubov, S.  N.  Bose,

O. R.  Frisch, M.  Goeppert  Mayer,

C.  J.  Gorter, A.  Ioffe, A.  Kastler,

P.  Kapitsa, L.  D.  Landau, L.  Meitner,

L.  Néel, J.  H Oort. C.  H.  Townes,

V.  I.  Veksler

1960 physics C.  J.  Gorter – D. A.  Glaser

(80) A.  Abragam,

N.  G.  Basov  (1964), H.  A.  Bethe,

N.  N.  Bogoljubov, L.  Brillouin,

R.  P.  Feynman (1965),

M.  Goeppert  Mayer,

D. C.  Hodgkin  (1964), A.  Kastler,

P.  Kapitsa, J.  C.  Kendrew (1962),

L.  D.  Landau, L.  Néel,

J.  H.  Oort, A.  W.  Overhauser,

M.  F.  Perutz  (1962),

A.  M.  Prokhorov  (1964),

J.  Schwinger  (1965), C.  H.  Townes,

E.  P.  Wigner

1960 chemistry A.  Ölander – W.  F.  Libby

(82) M.  Calvin, D.  C.  Hodgkin,

C.  K.  Ingold, L.  Onsager,

M.  F.  Perutz, M.  Polanyi,

I.  Prigogine, M.  Volmer,

R.  B.  Woodward

1961 physics C.  J.  Gorter –

R.  Hofstadter,

R.  L.  Mössbauer

(54) J.  Bardeen  (1956, 1972),

L.  N.  Cooper  (1972), O.  R.  Frisch,

M.  Gell-Mann (1969), W.  H.  Heitler,

D. C.  Hodgkin, A.  Kastler,

J.  C.  Kendrew, L.  Meitner,

L.  Néel, L.  Onsager, J.  H.  Oort,

M.  F.  Perutz, M.  Polanyi,

J.  R.  Schrieffer  (1972), C.  H.  Townes,

J.  H.  van  Vleck  (1977), E.  P.  Wigner

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Table 1 (cont.)

Year Nomination Nominator

The prize to be

shared with

Laureates

(Number of nominations)

Zavoisky’s Co-Nominees

1962 physics

C.  J.  Gorter,

L.  Ružička

– L.  D.  Landau

(79) N.  G.  Basov,

N.  V.  Belov, H.  A.  Bethe,

N.  Bloembergen  (1981),

S.  N.  Bose,

S.  Chandrasekhar  (1983),

R.  P.  Feynman, M. Goeppert  Mayer,

W.  H.  Heitler, A.  Kastler,

L.  Néel, A.  M.  Prokhorov,

J.  Schwinger, C.  H.  Townes,

E.  P.  Wigner

1963 physics L.  Ružička –

E.  P.  Wigner,

M.  Goeppert

Mayer,

J.  H.  D. Jensen

(79) A.  Abragam,

N.  G.  Basov, N.  Bloembergen,

M.  Delbrück  (1969),

R.  P.  Feynman, O.  R.  Frisch,

W.  H.  Heitler, A.  Kastler, L.  Néel,

L.  Onsager, A.  W.  Overhauser,

A.  M.  Prokhorov, J.  Schwinger,

C.  H.  Townes

1964 physics

L.  A.  Artsimovic,

L.  Ružička

–

C.  H.  Townes,

N.  G.  Basov,

A.  M.  Prokhorov

(89) H.  A.  Bethe, R.  P.  Feynman,

S.  A.  Goudsmit, M.  Gell-Mann,

A.  Kastler, L.  Meitner, L.  Néel,

L.  Onsager, I.  Prigogine,

J.  Schwinger, R.  J.  Van  de  Graaff,

G.  E.  Uhlenbeck, V.  I.  Veksler

I.  E.  Tamm,

A.  P.  Alexandrov,

N.  N.  Semenov

C.  J.  Gorter

1965 physics L.  Ružička –

S.-I.  Tomonaga,

J.  Schwinger,

R.  P.  Feynman

(111) J.  Bardeen, H.  A.  Bethe,

L.  Brillouin, L.  N.  Cooper,

S.  A.  Goudsmit, M.  Gell-Mann,

W.  H.  Heitler, E.  Hückel,

P.  Kapitsa, A.  Kastler, L.  Meitner,

L.  Néel, L.  Onsager,

J.  R.  Schrieffer, G.  E.  Uhlenbeck,

V.  I.  Veksler

1966 physics

R Ritschl,

C.  J.  Gorter,

L.  Ružička

–

A.  Kastler

(118) J.  Bardeen, H.  A.  Bethe,

N.  N.  Bogoljubov, L.  N.  Cooper,

V.  A.  Fok, S.  A.  Goudsmit,

M.  Gell-Mann, W.  H.  Heitler,

E.  Hückel, P.  Kapitsa, L.  Néel,

L.  Onsager, A.  Salam  (1979),

J.  R.  Schrieffer, G.  E.  Uhlenbeck,

R.  J.  Van  de  Graaff, J.  H.  van  Vleck

B.  P.  Konstantinov,

A.  M.  Prokhorov

B.  Bleaney

E.  Rudberg C.  J.  Gorter

1967 physics – – H.  A.  Bethe (120)

1968 physics

A.  M.  Prokhorov

C.  J.  Gorter,

I.  Waller

L.  Alvarez

(133) A.  Abragam,

H.  Alfvén  (1970), J.  Bardeen,

N.  N.  Bogoljubov, S.N.  Bose,

S.  Chandrasekhar,

L.  N.  Cooper, M.  Gell-Mann,

B.  D.  Josephson  (1973), L.  Néel,

L.  Onsager, A.  W.  Overhauser,

M.  Polanyi, A.  Salam,

J.  R.  Schrieffer, S.  Vernov

A.  Kastler

C.  J.  Gorter,

J.  H.  Van Vleck

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Table 1 (cont.)

Year Nomination Nominator

The prize to be

shared with

Laureates

(Number of nominations)

Zavoisky’s Co-Nominees

1969 physics

C.  J.  Gorter,

S.  V Vonsovskij

–

M.  Gell-Mann

(140) H.  Alfvén, J.  Bardeen,

N.  Bloembergen, N.  N.  Bogoljubov,

S.  N.  Bose, L.  Brillouin, CERN,

S.  Chandrasekhar, L.  N.  Cooper,

G.  N.  Flerov, S.  A.  Goudsmit,

W.  Heisenberg, W.  H.  Heitler,

A.  Landé, A.  Salam, J.  R.  Schrieffer,

G.  E.  Uhlenbeck

J.  Chariton J.  G Dorfman

A.  B.  Migdal

M.  Gell-Mann,

P.  L.  Kapitsa

A.  P.  Alexandrov,

S.  V.  Vonsovskij

C.  J.  Gorter,

I.  Waller

1970 physics

C.  J.  Gorter –

H.  Alfvén,

L.  Néel

(130) A.  Abragam,

A.  A.  Abrikosov (2003), J.  Bardeen,

N.  N.  Bogoljubov, S.  N.  Bose,

S.  Chandrasekhar, L.  N.  Cooper,

G.  N.  Flerov, S.  A.  Goudsmit,

W.H.  Heitler, B.  D. Josephson,

M.  Polanyi, I.  Prigogine, A.  Salam,

J.  R.  Schrieffer, E.  Teller,

G.  E.  Uhlenbeck, V.  F.  Weisskopf

A.  B.  Migdal P.  L.  Kapitsa

G.  Feher J.  H.  Van Vleck

A.  M.  Prokhorov,

S.  V.  Vonsovskij

C.  J.  Gorter,

I.  Waller

Note. The table includes a list of Zavoisky’s nominators and co-nominees. For each year, a list of the winners and

a total number of nominations (in brackets) are given, along with a list of selected nominees. At the first refer-

ence, the nominee is underlined and the year of the award (if awarded) is indicated in brackets. Surnames are

spelled as per the Nobel Nomination Archive. The table is based on the data from the Nomination Archive [4].

Fig. 1. Pages from the newspapers Pravda (a) and Industry and Trade Newspaper (b) [in Russian] featuring Lenin Prize

1957 laureates, E. K. Zavoisky included [top left in (a) and third left in (b)]. The latter (b) as well features his paper “The

phenomenon of paramagnetic resonance” (“Явление парамагнитного резонанса” [in Russian]). Source: N.E. Zavoiskaya’s

personal archive.

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BIOCHEMISTRY (Moscow) Vol. 90 Suppl. 2 2025

Fig. 2. Cornelis Jacobus Gorter (right) with Nicolaas Bloembergen (left) outdoors at Lake Chuzenji, Nikko, Japan, circa 1953.

Source: Bloembergen and Gorter. Niels Bohr Library &Archives, American Institute of Physics. One Physics Ellipse, College

Park, MD 20740.

of its prestige in the USSR somewhat similar to the

Nobel Prize, seems to have made the name of Evgeny

Zavoisky publicly known, for the first time since he

had made his groundbreaking EPR discoveries ten

years before. In the Soviet newspapers, including Pra-

vda (“the Truth”), an official newspaper of the Com-

munist Party and one of the most influential media

outlet in the USSR, a feature on Lenin Prize laureates

was published, an article by Zavoisky and his por-

trait included. In a way, this feature must have been

a proof for the Western world that Evgeny Zavoisky

was a “real person” (Fig.  1). As is known, C.  J.  Gorter,

when in the USSR attending the Third All-Union

Conference on the Physics of Magnetic Phenomena

(1956), wanted to talk to Zavoisky in person, but this

was not allowed due to Zavoisky’s previous involve-

ment in the Soviet nuclear program  [2]. Recognition

of a scientist in his homeland is most certainly an

important part of international acknowledgment, of

which Zavoisky is a vivid example. This circumstance

makes it all the more important for the nation to

honor its scientific developments and the scientists

behind them in the first place.

Below is a detailed account of who nominated

Zavoisky for the Nobel Prize and who was his major

competition for the world’s most important scientif-

ic award year by year, beginning with 1958 through

1966.

In 1958, as was said earlier, two nominators

proposed E.  K.  Zavoisky for the Nobel Prize: J.  Weiss

recommended him for the Chemistry Prize, and

C.  Gorter – for the Prize in Physics.

Joseph Joshua Weiss (1905-1972), Professor at

the Newcastle University, was a pioneer and an au-

thority in the field of radiation chemistry. Among

the other things, he studied interaction between free

radicals and biologically important molecules [5, 6].

In1972, upon his death, the Association for Radiation

Research established the Weiss Medal [6] to honor his

contribution to science.

Cornelius Jacobus Gorter (1907-1980), a Dutch

physicist, was a pioneer of magnetic resonance ex-

perimentation and, in a way, Zavoisky’s competitor

(Fig.  2). He himself, however, held E.  K.  Zavoisky in

very high esteem. Once he came to know of Zavoisky’s

works on magnetic resonance, he added a reference

to them to the final proof of his book [7] before it

was published in 1947.

In the later years, as was already mentioned,

C.  J.  Gorter nominated Zavoisky for the Nobel Prize

multiple times. In 1958, apart from Evgeny Konstan-

tinovich, he proposed the candidature of Lois Néel

(1904-2000), a French physicist who eventually won

the Prize but a decade later – in 1970 he shared the

Prize with Hannes Alfvén “for fundamental work

and discoveries concerning antiferromagnetism and

ferrimagnetism, which have led to important appli-

cations in solid state physics”.

In 1958, the Nobel Prize in Physics was award-

ed to a group of Soviet scientists – P.  A.  Cherenkov.,

I.  M.  Frank, and I.  E.  Tamm – “for the discovery and

the interpretation of the Cherenkov effect”. All three

of them were nominated for the Prize in the previ-

ous year, 1957. P.  A.  Cherenkov was first proposed

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BIOCHEMISTRY (Moscow) Vol. 90 Suppl. 2 2025

Fig. 3. Ilya M.Frank. Source: A. I. Frank’s personal archive.

Photo by Yu.Tumanov.

Fig. 4. Leopold Ružička. Source: The Nobel Foundation –

http://nobelprize.org/, Public Domain, URL: https://commons.

wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9713540.

asa candidate back in 1952 and had been among the

nominees every year starting with 1955. The Chem-

istry Prize for that year went to F. Sanger, who won

the Nobel Prize twice – in 1958 and in 1980. That

year, 1958, the following candidates for the Chemistry

and Physics Prizes were also submitted: P.  L.  Kapitsa,

L.  D.  Landau, I.  Prigogine, E.  Wigner, H.  Bethe, J.  Oort,

D.  Bohm, L.  Onsager, M.  Goeppert  Mayer, M.  Calvin,

C.  Ingold, R.  Woodward, V.  Prelog, and many others

(in total, several dozen candidates in every category,

many of whom were eventually awarded the Prize in

the decades to come).

In 1959, Zavoisky was proposed by two nomi-

nators: Il’ja (Ilya) Mikhailovich Frank (1908-1990), a

Soviet physicist and the 1958 Nobel Prize laureate

(Fig.  3), and Leopold Ružička (1887-1976), a Croatian-

Swiss organic chemist and the 1939 Nobel Prize in

Chemistry laureate (Fig.  4). Ružička was quite a dil-

igent nominator – over the period ending in 1966

he made at least 42 nominations for the Prizes in

Chemistry and in Physics. Starting with 1959, he

persistently proposed Zavoisky for the Physics Prize

with two exceptions only – in 1960 he did not sub-

mit any candidates at all, and in 1961 his choice was

R.  Mössbauer who won the Prize that same year.

For I.  Frank, Zavoisky was his second choice that year

with V.  I.  Veksler, another Soviet experimental phys-

icist, proposed as his first choice. In 1959, the No-

bel Prize in Physics was awarded to O.  Chamberlain

and E.  Segrè “for their discovery of the antiproton”.

Among the nominees who did not win the Prize that

year were: N.  Wiener, C.  Townes, L.  Meitner, C.  Kittel,

A.  Kastler, A.  Ioffe, N.  N.  Bogolyubov, and many

of those who had been nominated a year before

(L.  Landau, E.  Wigner, L.  Néel, and others).

In 1960, C. Gorter nominated Zavoisky again, this

time as his only choice. In the same year, Zavoisky

was nominated for the Chemistry Prize by Arne

Ölander (1902-1984), a Swedish chemist and mem-

ber of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. This was

Zavoisky’s last nomination for the Prize in Chemis-

try, until 1966 at least. In 1960, the Chemistry Prize

went to W.  F.  Libby “for his method to use carbon-14

for age determination in archeology, geology, geo-

physics, and other branches of science”. The Physics

Prize was awarded to D.  Glaser “for the invention

of the bubble chamber”. Names of the majority of

the candidates for the years 1958-1959 listed above

(P.  L.  Kapitsa, L.  Landau, E.  Wigner, H.  Bethe, J.  Oort,

L.  Onsager, M.  Goeppert  Mayer, M.  Calvin, C.  Ingold,

R.  Woodward, C.  Townes, A.  Kastler, N.  N.  Bogolyubov,

L.  Néel, I.  Prigogine) were among the nominees for

this year as well and would be, repeatedly, through-

out the years to come, often submitted for different

Prizes or, at times, for several Prizes simultaneous-

ly. (In 1960, only V.  Prelog and L.  Meitner out of

the previous two-year period nominees were absent

from the list of candidates to be nominated again

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in the later years. For C.  Kittel, 1959 was the last

year when he was nominated for the Nobel Prize, at

least in the period the documents are disclosed for.

N.  Wiener and A.  Ioffe both were nominated only

once, in 1959.) On these grounds, their names will be

skipped further on. In 1960, the 1958-1959 candidates

were joined by N.  G.  Basov and A.  M.  Prokhorov,

A.  Abragam, M.  Gell-Mann, R.  Feynman, D.  Hodgkin,

J.  Kendrew, and M.  Perutz nominated for the Prize in

Physics, and by M.  Volmer, M.  Polanyi, F.  Crick, and

J.  Watson proposed for the Prize in Chemistry. Please

note, this list of names is far from being complete

and features only a small part of all the Nobel Prize

candidates for the period discussed.

In 1961, E.  K.  Zavoisky once again was the

C.  J.  Gorter’s choice for the Prize. In that year, as

was said earlier, the Nobel Prize was awarded to

R.  Mössbauer, nominated by L.  Ružička, “for his re-

searches concerning the resonance absorption of

gamma radiation and his discovery in this connec-

tion of the effect which bears his name” and to

Robert Hofstadter “for his pioneering studies of elec-

tron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby

achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the

nucleons”. Among the nominees, apart from those

mentioned earlier, there were W.  Heitler, O.  Frisch,

and J.  van  Vleck.

In 1962, once again, E.  K.  Zavoisky was nom-

inated for the Prize by C.  Gorter and L.  Ružička.

That year, Lev  Landau, another Soviet physicist, was

awarded the Nobel Prize “for his pioneering theo-

ries for condensed matter, especially liquid helium”

(earlier the same year he had barely survived a car

accident, a circumstance that probably prompted the

Royal Academy to put him on the fast track for the

Nobel Prize). In addition to the previously listed sci-

entists, in 1962, among the candidates were S.  Bose,

N.  Bloembergen, S.  Chandrasekhar, J.  Schwinger, and

N.  V.  Belov.

In 1963, Zavoisky was nominated by L.  Ružička

once more. The Nobel Prize for that year was divided

between E.  Wigner “for his contributions to the the-

ory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary parti-

cles…”, and M.  Goeppert  Mayer and J.  Hans  D.  Jensen

“for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell struc-

ture”. J.  Bardeen, L.  Cooper, and A.  Overhauser, all of

them having been nominees before but not yet men-

tioned here, were proposed this year as well, along

with the group of scientists previously discussed.

M.  Delbrück, first appeared as a candidate for the

Nobel Prize also in 1963.

1964 was the year when Soviet scientific society

displayed a new wave of interest in seeking interna-

tional recognition for E.  K.  Zavoisky. That year, apart

from L.  Ružička, his devoted nominator, the name of

Zavoisky was submitted by four Soviet academicians:

L.  A.  Artsimovich, A.  P.  Alexandrov, N.  N.  Semenov,

and I.  E.  Tamm, the latter two the Nobel Prize lau-

reates. For Ružička and Artsimovich, E.  K.  Zavoisky

was their only choice, while the three other phys-

icists suggested “the prize to be shared between

E.  K.  Zavojskii

and C.  J.  Gorter”.

In the very same year though, D.  V.  Skobeltsyn,

director of the Physical Institute of the Academy of

Sciences, proposed N.  G.  Basov, A.  M.  Prokhorov, and

C.  Townes for the Prize, and, in the end, they were

the winners of the Nobel Prize for that year. Two dif-

ferent nominations from the Soviet Union obviously

competed against each other. This incident is a per-

suasive example of the hypocrisy thriving in the So-

viet scientific community that seldom lived up to its

declared principles of integrity, solidarity, concerted

efforts, and united front on the international arena.

It was well known in the local scientific communi-

ty, D.  V.  Skobeltsyn included, that the four academi-

cians were nominating Zavoisky for the Nobel Prize

that year. Yet, he chose to make a decision that, to a

certain extent, devalued their effort, instead of sup-

porting it. His candidates won the Nobel competition

for that year and, thus, in terms of the USSR “team

score”, his decision was not unjustified.

In 1965, L.  Ružička was the only one who nomi-

nated Zavoisky for the Nobel Prize, which was award-

ed that year to S.-I.  Tomonaga, J.  Schwinger, and

R.  Feynman “for their fundamental work in quantum

electrodynamics…”.

In 1966, L.  Ružička was no longer alone in pro-

posing E.  K.  Zavoisky for the Prize. He was joined

by C.  J.  Gorter (who had previously been nominating

L.  Néel for two years in a row) and E.  Rudberg. The

latter, apart from Zavoisky, made two more nomi-

nations: one proposing to divide the Prize between

A.  Kastler and J.  Brossel, and the other one suggesting

the Prize to be shared by L.  Néel and J.  van  Vleck.

A.  Kastler was the one who was awarded the Nobel

Prize in 1966, others (but J.  Brossel) to follow suite in

later years. Ružička, Gorter, and Rudberg were not the

only ones for whom E.  K.  Zavoisky was their choice

for that year. A.  M.  Prokhorov and B.  P.  Konstantinov

nominated him in the company of B.  Bleaney, while

R.  Ritschl proposed Zavoisky as a solo candidate. Like

in the previous years, the list of candidates for the

Prize included H.  Bethe, P.  L.  Kapitsa, M.  Gell-Mann,

L.  Néel, L.  Onsager, N.  N.  Bogolyubov, W.  Heitler,

G.  Uhlenbeck and S.  Goudsmit, and E.  Hückel. This

is the last year for which the archival documents of

the Nobel organization were available as of 2018, the

year the original monograph was finished in.

By the time the English translation was prepared

(2023), more data was made available (up to 1970)

Another way to spell Cyrillic “Завойский” in English.

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Fig. 5. Histogram and cumulative distribution function of nominations among the eventual Nobel Prize winners-Zavoisky’s

co-nominees in 1958 (for the period of 1958-1970). The dashed vertical line marks the “position” of Zavoisky against his

competitors. Source of the data: the Nomination Archive [4].

providing for a total of 13-years of Zavoisky’s nom-

inations history. Cumulative distribution analysis

of the total number of nominations received by

Zavoisky and by the eventual Nobel Prize winners

who entered (or continued) the “Nobel Prize Relay”

in the same year (1958) puts him in the upper tercile

(Fig.  5). Nominated on 35 occasions known of as of

2023, E.  K.  Zavoisky, in other words, was among the

strongest candidates for the Nobel Prize.

From the data already disclosed, it is clear that

Zavoisky, firstly, had always been held in high es-

teem by the world scientific community – year by

year he was a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Phys-

ics or for the Prizes in Physics and Chemistry at the

same time. And secondly, he was never awarded the

Nobel Prize in the times when competition was par-

ticularly intense between the discoveries as well as

between the scientists. While the unfairness of him

never winning the Nobel Prize is painfully obvious,

it is hard to pinpoint the exact moment when it took

place or, strictly speaking, who exactly and when

precisely unfairly took Zavoisky’s place among the

Nobel Prize laureates. When you look at the names

listed above, an incomplete  (!) list of them, it is hard

to decide on the answer. Apparently, the only chance

for Zavoisky to squeeze into that never-stopping over-

crowded train of Nobel Prize-worth scientific advanc-

es was in 1952, sharing the Prize with F.  Bloch and

E.  M.  Purcell. Unfortunately, it was the period when

the Soviet government (meaning the entire Soviet

science as well) chose to completely isolate itself

from the rest of the world, international versions

of the Soviet peer-reviewed journals were discontin-

ued and scientific ties with the world were cut off.

N.  E.  Zavoiskaya located the archival documents can-

celling the trip of the Soviet delegation to Amster-

dam to take part in the International Conference on

Spectroscopy at Radiofrequencies (18-23 September

1950)– M.  A.  Suslov, Secretary of the Communist Par-

ty of the Soviet Union and its chief ideologue, deemed

it “inexpedient” [2]. One can only guess how many

of such “inexpedient” rulings remain buried in the

archives. The officially sanctioned policy of delaying

paper publications did not help either. Of this, the ex-

ample of S.  A.  Altshuler and B.  M.  Kozyrev, Zavoisky’s

closest collaborators, is very illustrative – they made

a discovery of the hyperfine structure in the para-

magnetic resonance spectrum [8] in 1948, that is one

year before R.  Penrose  [9], but their paper had been

“sitting on the shelves” in Doklady of the USSR Acad-

emy of Sciences for two long years to result in the

findings of the Soviet physicists to lose their scientific

priority [1]. Finally, in 1952, the Nobel Prize award

may have cost a Soviet scientist his career at the

least, if not his life or freedom. In 1947, for example,

international recognition of their achievements took

N.  G.  Klueva and G.  I.  Roskin to the “court of honor”

(for the review of their book see the British Medical

Bulletin [10]); V.  V.  Parin

, who made their findings

known abroad while on an official visit to the US,

In 1947, V.  V.  Parin, a Soviet physiologist and Secretary of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, was accused

of spying for the United States of America following his sharing a manuscript on the Soviet anti-cancer treatment

(“crucine”) research with his American colleagues. In the wake of Parin’s arrest following the manuscript incident,

its authors, Soviet scientists N.  G.  Klueva and G.  I.  Roskin, were publicly reprimanded in the “court of honor”, estab-

lished by the Ministry of Health. This incident had far-reaching consequences for the Soviet science, in particular

with regard to sharing its achievements with the international community– an extraordinarily restrictive procedure

for any scientific research to come out in print was established.

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BIOCHEMISTRY (Moscow) Vol. 90 Suppl. 2 2025

was arrested in the same year. In a much less “carni-

vore” 1958, a campaign of abuse was waged against

B.  L.  Pasternak

, a Soviet poet awarded the Nobel

Prize in Literature for that year. All these exempli-

fy the possible fate of a Nobel Prize laureate in the

USSR in 1952.

It looks like Zavoisky still had a chance to win

the Nobel Prize in later years. The long repeating

list of candidates, only briefly referred to above,

demonstrates what a lengthy way (for decades!) of

year-after-year nominations it took for the outstand-

ing scientists to be justly awarded the Nobel Prize.

H.  Bethe, for example, had been a nominee for 24  (!)

years, his candidature proposed on 48 occasions, be-

fore he was awarded the Nobel Prize. L.  Onsager had

been nominated at least 47 times during 16 years.

L.  Néel became a Nobel Prize laureate after 18 years

and 77 nominations. Respect of the world’s leading

scientists willing (and asked) to make a nomination

and a nominee’s long life both seem to be of help in

winning the Prize. It is obvious from the known 17

nominations that Zavoisky had enough of the first,

but unfortunately was not meant to have the latter.

It is noteworthy, that magnetic resonance methods

won their next Nobel Prizes again nearly half a centu-

ry later (for example, R.  Ernst, 1991, and K.  Wüthrich,

2002, more on this later).

Lack of enthusiasm on the part of Soviet nom-

inators, meanwhile, stands out. Zavoisky was nom-

inated for the Nobel Prize by his Soviet colleagues

only three times in the 9 years reviewed: in 1959,

in 1964, and in 1966. Such feeble enthusiasm was

characteristic of their involvement in the nominating

process in general, irrespective of Zavoisky. Unfortu-

nately, it is impossible to know who were the Soviet

scientists asked each year to submit their candidates

for the Nobel Prize. What is known for a fact is that

Nobel Prize winners are welcome to submit their

choices every year. Strange as it might seem, Nobel

Prize laureates in the USSR took little advantage of

their status to nominate candidates, fellow Soviet

scientists or not. As of the year 1966, Soviet Nobel

Prize laureates were at liberty to make a total of 42

nominations (all candidates proposed by one person

for a year counted as one nomination; since one per-

son is allowed to nominate several scientists for a

given year, that number increases exponentially). In

the meantime, according to the data disclosed by the

Nobel organization as of 2018, only 8 nominations

came from the USSR Nobel Prize winners, that is ⅕ of

the minimum possible count! Unlike their Soviet col-

leagues, Nobel Prize laureates from other countries

took their privilege more seriously. Above mentioned

E.  Segrè, W.  F.  Libby, and R.  Mössbauer, for example,

exercised their right every year. Renowned Nobel

Prize laureates of the previous years paid attention

to the findings worth of the Nobel Prize too. N.  Bohr

(Nobel Prize 1922), except for the war time, skipped

12 years only in the 40-year period since the year

he was awarded the Nobel Prize till the end of his

life (that is the period he had the right to submit

his choices for the Prize). L.  de  Broglie (Nobel Prize

1929) “missed” two years only, W.  Heisenberg (Nobel

Prize 1932) – eight years, apart from the war peri-

od, E.  Fermi (Nobel Prize 1938) never missed a year,

except for the World War  II, M.  Born (Nobel Prize

1954) took a pause only three times. One could only

assume that Soviet scientists might have not per-

ceived the Nobel Prize as prestigious an honor as

their Western colleagues have, or they might have

judged the discoveries worth of the Prize by a higher

standard.

Let us see who else, other than E.  K.  Zavoisky,

his nominators proposed for the Nobel Prize over the

period under discussion. For E.  Rudberg, 1966 was

the first year in his nominating history. J.  Weiss took

part in the nominating process only once – in 1958.

Arne  Ölander, after 1960, submitted his choice twice

more – in one instance he proposed the name of

N.  V.  Belov, a Soviet crystallographer and geochemist,

in the other instance he suggested the prize to be

shared between R.  Norrish and G.  Porter. C.  J.  Gorter,

starting with 1948, made 11 nominations, his choices

being L.  Néel, F.  Bloch, and B.  Matthias, among oth-

ers. L.  Ružička made 42 nominations (since 1934, for

the Chemistry Prize, and, since 1951, for the Prize in

Physics as well). He was very persistent in supporting

his choices – most of them he nominated repeatedly,

many of them– until they finally became Nobel Prize

laureates (such was the case with him nominating

R.  Woodward, T.  Reichstein, J.  Heyrovsky, R.  Robinson,

W.  Stanley, and others).

As for his fellow countrymen, neither A.  P.  Alex-

androv nor I.  E.  Tamm made any other nomination in

the period ending with 1966. L.  A.  Artsimovich, prior

to nominating Zavoisky, proposed L.  D.  Landau and

P.  L.  Kapitsa for the Nobel Prize, twice. I.  M.  Frank,

in 1966, nominated P.  L.  Kapitsa. N.  N.  Semenov

made the most considerable effort, having submit-

ted P.  L.  Kapitsa as his choice for the Nobel Prize in

Physics to be followed by two nominations for the

Nobel Prize in Chemistry he made twice for each

group of scientists: A.  N.  Frumkin and M.  Volmer, and

A.  P.  Vinogradov and A.  Holmes.

Boris Pasternak, a Russian poet and a Nobel Prize laureate. In 1958, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

for his novel “Doctor Zhivago”. Having first accepted the honor, he later declined it, amid a campaign of abuse it

brought to him in the Soviet Union.

KESSENIKH, PTUSHENKOS442

BIOCHEMISTRY (Moscow) Vol. 90 Suppl. 2 2025

In conclusion, it needs to be said that this over-

view covers the period that was probably not the

most intriguing in the Nobel Prize nomination histo-

ry of the EPR discovery. Late 1940s-early 1950s was

the time when the Soviet science was heavily veiled

from the world, while late 1950s and the first half of

the 1960s was the period of the Thaw

in the USSR

with the ties between the Soviet and the world sci-

ence at their strongest. In this later part of the period

reviewed, Soviet scientists were awarded the Nobel

Prize nearly every other year (1956, 1958, 1962, 1964).

This “flow” of Nobel Prizes going to the Soviet Union

might have been perceived by the international sci-

entific community as a sufficiently high recognition,

enough for the Soviet science. In that period the can-

didature of E.  K.  Zavoisky was often in competition

with his fellow Soviet scientists. It would be interest-

ing to know what was the situation in the late 1960s

and in the years that followed: whether Zavoisky was

ever nominated for the Nobel Prize again and, if he

was, whether the pool of his nominators got larger or

smaller, and who was his competition. The answer is

in the archival documents that are yet to be disclosed

during the current decade

CONCLUSION

The Nobel Prize history of magnetic resonance

related phenomena shows that electron paramagnetic

resonance had little luck in terms of its recognition–

the discovery of EPR brought the Nobel Prize to no

scientist. Isidor Rabi who was the first to observe

EPR but in an atomic beam (E.  K.  Zavoisky referred

to Rabi’s experiment in his doctoral dissertation)

won the Nobel Prize “for his resonance method for

recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei”.

Pierre Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize “in recog-

nition of the… joint researches on the radiation phe-

nomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”,

but not for Curie’s law. Neither G.  Uhlenbeck nor

S.  Goudsmit was awarded the Prize for the discov-

ery of electron spin. J.  van  Vleck was the only one

whose EPR-related work was recognized by the

Nobel Prize which he shared, in the twilight of his

life, with P.  Anderson and N.  Mott for “fundamental

theoretical investigations of the electronic structure

of magnetic and disordered systems”. Verdicts given

by the Nobel Committee for Physics reflected general

consensus (that we share) that magnetic resonance

was not the phenomenon to be discovered through

a one-and-done process, although for a specific me-

dia it could be. According to our estimation, rough-

ly 60% of all the Nobel Prizes in Physics ever given

had a motivation containing the words “discovery”,

“discoveries” or “discovering”. Meanwhile, I.  Rabi was

awarded the Prize “for his resonance method”, Bloch

and Purcell shared the Prize “for their development

of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision mea-

surements and discoveries in connection therewith”.

That is, in the view of the Nobel Committee, they, for

the most part, developed (different) methods, which

helped them discover something. The Prize motiva-

tion does not state directly that magnetic resonance

in a substance was discovered, let alone magnet-

ic resonance in general as a phenomenon. In other

words, scientific priority of E.  K.  Zavoisky’s discovery

was in no way undermined. To add to the picture,

in 1966, A.  Kastler was awarded the Nobel Prize for

his discovery of magneto-optical resonance, yet the

Nobel Committee’s motivation wording was “for the

discovery and development of optical methods for

studying Hertzian resonances in atoms”.

Eventually, some works related, directly or indi-

rectly, to magnetic resonance phenomena and their

applications were recognized by “long-overdue”

Nobel Prizes. These were the Nobel Prizes awarded to

J. van Vleck in 1977, to N.Ramsey in 1989 (“for the in-

vention of the separated oscillatory fields method…”),

and to A. Leggett in 2003 (“for pioneering contributions

to the theory of superconductors and superfluids”).

After that, magnetic resonance related breakthroughs

were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (R. Ernst,

1991; Kurt Wüthrich, 2002) and in Physiology or Medi-

cine (P.  Lauterbur and P.  Mansfield, 2003). More on this

in [11]. A. Leggett was given the Prize for his theo-

retical work on superfluid

He (this Prize was errone-

ously omitted in [11]), for which NMR methods were

apparently instrumental (for references see the book

by A. Abragam and M. Goldman [12], for example [13]).

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Natalya E. Zavoiskaya, Alexan-

der I. Frank and Niels Bohr Library & Archives for

kind permission to reproduce archival materials and

photographs.

The Khrushchev’s Thaw, a period of general liberalization of life in the post-Stalin Soviet Union.

The data for the years 1967-1970 presented in table shows that 1967 was the only year when Zavoysky was not among

the nominees for the Nobel Prize. In 1968-1970, several nominators proposed his candidature every year. C. J. Gort-

er remained his staunch nominator. Fellow Soviet scientists grew to become more involved than in previous years,

which does them credit. On the Soviet side, stand out two nominations made by S. V. Vonsovsky in the same 1969.

Vonsovsky must have submitted the first of the two in 1968 but too late to meet the Nobel Committee’s deadline for

that year. This could have accounted for his 1968 nomination to be registered for the next year’s award instead, that

is for 1969.

IN THE MIRROR OF THE NOBEL PRIZE S443

BIOCHEMISTRY (Moscow) Vol. 90 Suppl. 2 2025

Funding

This work was carried out within the framework of

the State Assignment for the Lomonosov Moscow State

University and State Assignment for the Emanuel In-

stitute of Biochemical Physics, Russian Academy of

Sciences (no.001201253314).

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This work does not contain any studies involving hu-

man and animal subjects.

Conflict of interest

The authors of this work declare that they have no

conflicts of interest.

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Translated by Alena V. Silina