Ramsey, Norman Foster, Jr.

Ramsey, Norman Foster, Jr.,

1915–2011, American physicist, b. Washington, D.C., Ph.D. Columbia, 1940. A member of the faculty at Harvard from 1947 and the Higgins professor of physics from 1966 (emeritus from 1987), Ramsey also held several posts with such government and international agencies as NATO and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method, or Ramsey method, which had important applications in the construction of atomic clocksatomic clock,
electric or electronic timekeeping device that is controlled by atomic or molecular oscillations. A timekeeping device must contain or be connected to some apparatus that oscillates at a uniform rate to control the rate of movement of its hands or the rate of
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 and also contributed to the development of nuclear magnetic resonancemagnetic resonance,
in physics and chemistry, phenomenon produced by simultaneously applying a steady magnetic field and electromagnetic radiation (usually radio waves) to a sample of atoms and then adjusting the frequency of the radiation and the strength of the magnetic field
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. He shared the prize with Hans G. DehmeltDehmelt, Hans Georg
, 1922–2017, German-American physicist, b. Gorlitz, Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1950. A professor at the Univ. of Washington in Seattle, where he taught from 1955 to 2002, Dehmelt developed an ion-trap technique known as the Penning trap,
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 and Wolfgang PaulPaul, Wolfgang,
1913–93, German physicist, Ph.D. Technical Univ., Berlin, 1939. A professor at the Univ. of Bonn from 1952, Paul developed an ion-trap technique (known as the Paul trap), which made possible the detailed study of subatomic particles.
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. Ramsey also developed hydrogen maser atomic clock in 1960 with David Kleppner.