Collections History\Evgeny Zavoisky Lab-Museum - Kazan (Volga region) Federal University
Collections History

In the end of December 1944 Zavoisky was invited by the All-Union Council on Radiophysics and Radioengineering of the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences to take part in the Session on Radio-Frequency Oscillations. The Session was held in the Assembly Hall of Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. According to the documents remained, Zavoisky's report was neither understood nor approved by the scientists, who took part in the seminar.

On December 1944 the seminar with the following agenda was held in the Institute for Physical Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences:

1.   Non-linear phenomena caused by interaction… (G.Gorelik). 
2.   Paramagnetic relaxation (Ye.K.Zavoisky).

Such famous physicists as academicians P.L.Kapitsa, N.N.Semyonov, A.F.Ioffe, corresponding member L.D.Landau, professors and future academicians Ye.M.Livshits, A.I.Shalnikov, A.B.Midgal, I.N.Flerov, and E.L.Andronikashvili took part in the seminar. P.L.Kapitsa wrote:

"When Ye.K.Zavoisky discovered paramagnetic resonance in 1944, and came to Moscow from Kazan, he went to Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences. They sent him away and told, that it was impossible. So I suggested him building the device. It was designed in a week time. Then we invited people from the Physics Institute and showed them the device: you see the thing is working".

Before his presentation in January 1945 Zavoisky studied the effect of paramagnetic absorption with low temperatures and frequency 133 MHz at the Institute for Physical Problems (P.L.Kapitsa Institute). The antiferromagnetism effect in resonance phenomena was experimentally proved. The first results published in 1945 were those, achieved in successful Moscow experiments on producing completely-solved EPR-lines.

The thesis was presented in the Physics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences on January 30, 1945. Later on the scientist was given the Doctoral Degree in Physics and Mathematics and the title of professor.

Twenty five years later, on June 23, 1970, the Committee for Inventions and Discoveries of the USSR Soviet of Ministers entered Zavoisky's discovery "Phenomena of Electronic Paramagnetic resonance" in the USSR Register (Priority of Intention dated July 12, 1944). This day is considered to be the official date of EPR discovery.