On behalf of the Organizing Committee of the 13th European Federation of Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EFEPR) Conference and the accompanying Young Researcher Conference (yEFEPR), I am pleased to invite you to join us in Brno, Czech Republic, from 29 August to 5 September 2026, at the OREA Congress Hotel.
The yEFEPR conference, dedicated to young scientists in magnetic resonance, will take place during the first two days and will be followed by the main EFEPR 2026 conference.
This year’s EFEPR holds special significance: it takes place on the 100th anniversary of Josef Dadok (28 February 1926 – 4 October 2024), a renowned Czech scientist, and magnetic resonance pioneer - a name deeply intertwined with the history of EPR and NMR in Czechoslovakia [1,2].
Dadok graduated from Brno University of Technology in the early 50s. In 1960, he founded the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Department at the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI), Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where he, together with his team, developed the first devices for NMR spectroscopy in Czechoslovakia. At that time, an embargo from the US on NMR equipment to the Soviet Bloc made scientific progress difficult. Luckily, ISI was just ten minutes from TESLA Brno – the state-sponsored monopoly on electronics production in Czechoslovakia. In 1965, TESLA put Dadok’s first 60 MHz spectrometer, the TESLA BS477, into production, making Czechoslovakia the third country, after the USA and Japan, to succeed in the serial production of these scientific devices. This was the only production of its kind in the Eastern Bloc, which continued for 25 years, resulting in about 500 TESLA spectrometers.
In 1967, Professor Dadok left for an internship in the USA and did not return after the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1976, he became Technical Director of the Pittsburgh National NMR Centre and full professor at Carnegie Mellon University. A year later, he developed the first 600 MHz superconducting spectrometer (14.1 T), which remained the most powerful high-resolution NMR system in the world for eight years.
Dadok’s legacy remains alive in Brno. Since 2013, the National NMR Centre at CEITEC has carried his name and houses the most powerful spectrometer in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, my team at the Magneto-Optical and THz Spectroscopy group aims to reestablish the tradition of magnetic resonance development in Brno, started by Josef Dadok. You can read more about the history of EPR in Czechoslovakia and Dadok’s legacy in our recent paper [3].
I am honored to host EFEPR 2026 in a city so deeply tied to Josef Dadok’s legacy. I believe his spirit of scientific excellence will inspire all participants.
On behalf of the Organizing Committee, I warmly invite you to register and join us for what promises to be an exciting and memorable meeting.
We look forward to welcoming you to Brno in 2026!
Warm regards,
On behalf of the Organizing Committee
Petr Neugebauer
[1] B. Král and A. Blatná, Slaboproudý obzor, 72, 4 (2016)
[2] V. Zeman, Vzpomínky na NMR v Brněnské Tesle. Stan's Library: http://www.ebyte.it/library/hist/NMR_Tesla_cs.html.
[3] J. Dubský et al., ESR in the Czech Republic, its Historical Overview, Current Status, and Future, Appl. Magn. Reson. 55, 1047-1064 (2024).
[4] J. Dadok and R.F. Sprecher, Correlation NMR spectroscopy. J. Magn. Reson. 13, 243 (1974).
