Where a sociologist studies the routines, an historian goes for the innovative breaks. While it is true that the vast majority of nmr spectra map out molecular structure, the genuine input of nmr in chemistry was providing other types of information. Dynamic, first and foremost: rate processes in fluxional molecules and coordination complexes; molecular tumbling in fluids; real-time acquisition of internal rotations and atomic inversions, processes of displacements and encapsulations, etc etc. In other words, the field was driven by its inner push forward, much more than from user demand, however strong. This is validated from the instrumental viewpoint: a manufacturer such as Varian Associates making an effort at educating its users; the monthly Newsletter communicating brand-new methodologies; and even some chemists, such as Frank Anet, devising their own instruments. The talk will draw on examples, such as establishing the structure of PF<sub>5</sub> as a trigonal bipyramid, subject to a fluxional process. The very term fluxionality indeed came into the lexicon from the nmr of bullvalene.

Multi-pronged bite of NMR

2019 Spring National Meeting

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