Probably the first UK public meeting on magnetic resonance was held at the Physical Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford University on 25th May 1956. The conference was organized jointly by the Physical Methods Group (Chairman, James Page, then of Boots and later of Glaxo) of the Society for Analytical Chemistry and the Photoelectric Spectrometry Group. Both these groups recognised that some new powerful spectroscopic techniques were emerging that could be used for analysis and needed to be appreciated more widely. It is interesting that, at this time, a half-day meeting was thought to be sufficient to encompass both electron and nuclear magnetic resonance! The full program for the meeting, abstracts of the various talks and some fascinating details of the meeting organisation are available (Meeting 1956.pdf) on this web site. Rex Richards has described how he left his NMR machine running all afternoon during the meeting, scanning the ethanol proton NMR spectrum with good resolution to show the stability of the instrument.

Also, in 1956, a group of physicists and physical chemists, including Raymond Andrew, Jack Powles and Rex Richards founded the British Radiofrequency Spectroscopy Group (BRSG). This remained an independent group until 2000 when it became affiliated to the Institute of Physics as ‘The Magnetic Resonance Group’. A long series of meetings has been organised by the BRSG and early ones of note included those on “High resolution NMR” in April 1958 in Oxford, “Magnetic resonance in the solid state” in September 1958 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ‘ESR of free radicals and high resolution NMR’ in April 1961 in St Andrews and ‘Multiple resonance techniques’ at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington in January 1963. The NMRDG and BRSG have enjoyed a long and cooperative relationship with many NMR spectroscopists being members of both groups.  The two societies have held a number of joint meetings and have also often organised their meetings to run consecutively at the same location so that scientists could attend both.

Another early NMR meeting was held under the auspices of the Institute of Petroleum in Brighton in 1963.