Dr Satyamurthy has done pioneering work using thermal neutron beams to study magnetic materials. He set up neutron spectrometer facilities and used them to study ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic materials. He elucidated the magnetic structures of a number of alloy systems. Dr Satyamurthy's exhaustive neutron diffraction work on ferrites led to the discovery of the non-collinear spin structure, also known as Yafet-Kittel type of ferrimagnetism. He developed the polarized neutron technique for structure and spin density measurements in magnetite and a number of other compounds and alloys.