Herbert S. Gutowsky (1919 –2000) was an eminent scientist, a pioneer in NMR, and a professor (and former head of chemistry department) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He was the first to apply NMR to the field of chemistry. His work helped to make NMR one of the most useful techniques for the analysis of molecular structure and dynamics in liquids, solids, and gases. Examples of the important contributions from his laboratory include: 1) 1948-50. Gutowsky and Pake pioneered the use of NMR to study structure and motion in solids. This work continued in his lab all through the 1970s. 2) 1950-52. He was among the first to determine the origin of chemical shifts, a basic concept for NMR structure determination. 3) 1951-54. He was the first to discover spin-spin coupling in molecular liquids and its implications for the study of molecular structure. 4) 1951-56. He and his team developed the NMR methodologies to study chemical exchange and conformational change in molecules. This work continued in his lab at least until the mid-1970s. 5) 1961-63. He and his coworkers discovered spin rotation relaxation, one of the major relaxation mechanisms in molecular motion. He was active in research until his retirement in 1990. Later In his career, he used NMR to study complex biological systems and pulsed microwave spectroscopy to study the rotational spectra of weakly bound molecules in the gas phase. The speaker was fortunate to obtain his PhD with Gutowsky, with whom he published four papers. In this talk, the speaker will give a review of Gutowsky’s pioneering work and his personal recollections of the exciting research times at Illinois.

H. S. Gutowsky and the use of NMR in chemistry

2019 Spring National Meeting

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