NMR under Confinement: Roots in Retrospect

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has provided us with many beneficial opportunities for science and technology. Its continued use in novel fields has yielded impressive strength and attractiveness for nearly a century. This is particularly true with regards to the topic of this book, the exploration of ‘‘Fluid Transport in Porous Solids and Heterogeneous Materials’’. Here, the benefit of NMR in being able to look ‘‘from the outside’’ into a system becomes particularly evident. NMR operates as an ‘‘ideal spy’’, providing information without interfering with internally occurring phenomena. NMR is able to give information on pore spaces as well as anything that might happen within them. This wide-range of information that is accessible is illustrated by the examples in this book. The origin of some of these developments can, most remarkably, be traced back over many decades, to the very beginning of NMR research. In this chapter we will recollect some of the roots of the challenges we face today with applying NMR to studying ‘‘Fluid Transport in Porous Solids and Heterogeneous Materials’’- albeit with some bias by personal experiences and impressions.