Anatole Abragam made seminal contributions to both NMR and EPR and was a recipient of the ISMAR Prize and himself a Fellow of ISMAR. In addition to his superb scientific contributions, fostering people in science was clearly close to his heart. With this in mind, ISMAR has established an award for young investigators that will bear the title

Anatole Abragam Prize, sponsored by Bruker Biospin

The Russell Varian Lecture and Prize honors the memory of the pioneer behind the first commercial Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometers and co-founder of Varian Associates. The prize is awarded to a researcher based on a single innovative contribution (a single paper, patent, lecture, or piece of hardware) that has proven of high and broad impact on state-of-the-art NMR technology. The prize is designed to recognize the initial contribution that laid the foundations for a specific technology of great importance in state-of-the-art NMR.

It is now nearly seven months since the death of Sir Paul Callaghan, President of ISMAR (2008 – 2010). Funds are being raised to establish a Professorial Chair in Paul’s memory, hosted by Victoria University of Wellington – the Paul Callaghan Chair in Advanced Technology.

ISMAR has decided to change the sequence of its main conference from triennial to biennial. Thus, the 19th ISMAR Conference will take place in 2015. This change will make it easier to keep pace with the ever increasing activity in Magnetic Resonance worldwide. ISMAR has a tradition of rotating its conferences across the globe. After Germany in 1998, Israel 2001, USA 2004, Taiwan 2007, Italy 2010, and Brazil 2013 the natural cycle will preferably return us to Asia or the Pacific region in 2015 and to another continent in 2017.