In the late 1940s and early 50s, physicist Martin Packard made significant contributions to the emerging field of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology at Stanford University. Packard was later employed by Varian Associates, where he became head of the analytical instrumentation department, Corporate Vice President, and finally Assistant to Board Chairman Edward Ginzton. The collection is largely from his time at Varian, consisting of correspondence and memoranda, subject files maintained as Varian’s reference library, and files related to Varian’s corporate history. Packard’s involvement with the Addiction Research Foundation is also chronicled in part.

Martin Everett Packard, born in 1921, received his B.A. in Physics in 1942 from Oregon State University and began working at Westinghouse Research. In the summer of 1945 (following at stint at UC Berkeley Radiation Lab for the Manhattan Project), Packard was introduced to Felix Bloch by his supervisor at Westinghouse, Stanford physics alumnus Daniel Alpert. Bloch explained to Packard his ideas concerning nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), which he termed nuclear induction. The following week Packard enrolled as a graduate student at Stanford University, working with professors Bloch and William Hansen on Stanford’s first NMR experiments. As part of this experiment, Packard was the first to detect the nuclear magnetic resonance of protons in water in January 1946.

29 Linear feet (68 boxes: 67 manuscript boxes ; 1 record storage box)

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