History
The optical hyperfine structure was already observed in 1881 by Albert Abraham Michelson. It could, however, only be explained in terms of quantum mechanics when Wolfgang Pauli proposed the existence of a small nuclear magnetic moment in 1924.
In 1935, H. Schüler and Theodor Schmidt proposed the existence of a nuclear quadrupole moment in order to explain anomalies in the hyperfine structure.
Read more about this topic: Hyperfine Structure
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