  While measurements of the hyperfine structure of hydrogen-like atoms are
traditionally regarded as test of bound-state QED, we assume that theoretical
QED predictions are accurate and discuss the information about the
electromagnetic structure of protons that could be extracted from the
experimental values of the ground state hyperfine splitting in hydrogen and
muonic hydrogen. Using recent theoretical results on the proton polarizability
effects and the experimental hydrogen hyperfine splitting we obtain for the
Zemach radius of the proton the value 1.040(16) fm. We compare it to the
various theoretical estimates the uncertainty of which is shown to be larger
that 0.016 fm. This point of view gives quite convincing arguments in support
of projects to measure the hyperfine splitting of muonic hydrogen.
