The early days of NMR in the Southwest

This article describes the beginnings of NMR in the Southwest (New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) that started shortly after observation of the first signals in condensed matter. Besides university laboratories, very early NMR research was carried out in U.S. government, petroleum industry, and independent contract research laboratories. Much early research in biomedical NMR was also carried out. A major portion of the early work involved the use of NMR to explore for petroleum and analyze it. Petroleum exploration and much of biomedical NMR depend on the effects of surfaces in shortening the NMR relaxation times of the adsorbed water, and much of the research involved this topic. This history describes the path of development and the general types of instrumentation and identifies the people involved, which include many of the earliest pioneers in NMR located in other regions of the U.S.