Preface to the Second Edition
Our attempt to present NMR spectroscopy to the beginner in a somewhat different way was well-received, so that we were invited by Springer to make some additions to the original for a second edition. Naturally we have modified the text to take account of justified criticisms of the first edition. We decided immediately to extend the number and scope of the problems section comprising Part 2, as we know that this section has been very useful to our readers. We felt that solid-state NMR is now so important and so relatively easy to do that it would be well worth giving the reader a brief account of its advantages and disadvantages. And, having already dealt with four important nuclei in some detail, we decided to add some basic information on a number of other spin-1/2 nuclei which are now often studied.
We thank Prof. Janet Blümel, Texas A&M University, and the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker for allowing us to reproduce solid state NMR spectra. In addition we thank Klaus Jurkschat and Bernhard Lippert and their groups for making available samples of organometallic molecules. Thanks also go to Andrea Bokelmann and Bernhard Griewel for their valuable technical help.
Preface
Why write another NMR book? Most of the many already available involve theoretical approaches of various kinds and levels of complexity. Few books deal with purely practical aspects and a handful are slanted towards problem-solving. Collections of problems of different complexity are invaluable for students, since theory of itself is not very useful in deducing the structure from the spectra.
However, there is now a huge variety of NMR experiments available which can be used in problem-solving, in addition to the standard experiments which are a "must". We start by providing an overview of the most useful techniques available, as far as possible using one single molecule to demonstrate which information they bring. The problems follow in the second part of the book.
Readers can obtain a list of answers to the problems by application (by e-mail) to the authors
We thank Annette Danzmann and Christa Nettelbeck for their invaluable help in recording the spectra and our wives Karin and Monika for their patience and support during the writing of the book. We also thank Bernd Schmidt for reading the manuscript and giving us valuable tips on how it could be improved. Finally, we thank the staff at Springer for turning the manuscript into the finished product you now have in your hands.
Terence N. Mitchell, Burkhard Costisella