who was educated at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and the University of Leipzig. In his early work he made fundamental contributions to the quantum theory of solids, including Bloch’s theorem and quantitative theories of the electrical conductivity and magnetic properties of crystals. Bloch spent most of his career at Stanford University. While there, he invented nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in 1946. For this achievement he was awarded a share of the 1952 Nobel Prize for physics with Edward Purcell (1912–97), who independently invented NMR.