Robert Pound

Who was Robert Pound?

Robert Vivian Pound was an American physicist who helped discover nuclear magnetic resonance and who devised the famous Pound–Rebka experiment supporting general relativity. He became a tenured professor of physics at Harvard without ever having received a graduate degree.

Pound was born in Ridgeway, Ontario.

The discovery of NMR won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1952, though, due to the limitation on the number of recipients and the simultaneous discovery of NMR by Felix Bloch's group, Pound's advisor Ed Purcell received the award on behalf of his group at Harvard. Pound received the National Medal of Science in 1990 for his lifetime contributions to the field of physics. Pound was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics emeritus at Harvard University. He was a member of the class of 1941 at the University at Buffalo.