The general theme of this presentation is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in structural biology. Two aspects of special interest to biological physicists are discussed. These are, firstly, the results of NMR studies on the solvation of proteins and nucleic acids in solution and, secondly, the physical foundations of a novel NMR approach for studies with very large particles in solution, transverse relaxation-optimized spectroscopy (TROSY). ©1999 American Institute of Physics.