FOURIER TRANSFORM EPR

My first encounter with what was going to grow into Fourier transform EPR occurred, in retrospect, very early in my graduate studies with Professor Larry Kevan at Wayne State University. I arrived in his lab at the beginning of August 1971. Larry suggested, that in the month before classes started, I see what I could do with the saturation recovery bridge that someone else had started to put together before switching to a more productive project. The aim was to see if the T₁ of trapped electrons in alkaline ice glasses or hydrogen atoms in acid glasses could tell something about the structure of the traps. There was much interest in the trapped or solvated electron then not only from its role in radiolysis, but also from its interaction with the solvent as the simplest of anions. I started with a V153C klystron as a power source and a Philco-Ford waveguide diode switch as a modulator and a Varian V-line cavity as resonator and by the end of the month recorded my first saturation recovery curve. I then proceeded to make a few trivial improvements in my bridge and it did not function for another two years…