The Israeli Annual Magnetic Resonance Meeting in Memory of Prof. Asher Schmidt
Israel’s NMR community recently gathered at The Israeli 2024 Magnetic Resonance Meeting, which recently took place at the Technion. The event was dedicated to the memory of Prof. Asher Schmidt, one of Israel's leading solid-state NMR scientists, who passed away unexpectedly a year ago. The Technion had been his academic home for over 25 years.
The day-long symposium was initiated and sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Studies in Theoretical Chemistry (IASTC) at the Technion. One of the Institute's goals is to organize and support meetings that foster collaboration between theoreticians and experimentalists. Additional support was provided by Bruker and Prof. Efrat Lifshitz, Dean of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion. The meeting was organized by Prof. Aharon Blank and Dr. Shifi Kababya
Israel’s Magnetic Resonance community is a tight-knit family of scientists who are leaders in this field on a global level. Prof. Schmidt had been an active member of the community for decades, having pioneered sophisticated solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) strategies. Together with the late Prof. Shimon Vega from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Prof. Schmidt utilized Floquet theory to explain novel phenomena they discovered in solid-state NMR. At the IASTC, Floquet theory has been further extended to address atomic and molecular systems with finite lifetimes, driven by their interactions with strong lasers
In his opening remarks at the symposium, Prof. Nimrod Moiseyev, head of the IASTC, emphasized the passion for Floquet theory shared by Asher Schmidt, Shimon Vega, and himself. This shared interest enabled them to explore and uncover new phenomena in nature
The day’s lecturers and attendees came from all of Israel’s major universities, with an especially large contingent from the Weizmann Institute, as well as several guests from abroad and a handful from industry. Many of the speakers had been Prof. Schmidt’s colleagues or students, and even those who hadn’t known him personally paid homage to his legacy
