Norman Ramsey Jr.

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Norman Foster Ramsey Jr.
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Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (August 27, 1915 – November 4, 2011) was an American physicist who was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics, for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method (see Ramsey Interferometry) which had important applications in the construction of atomic clocks. A physics professor at Harvard University for most of his career, Ramsey also held several posts with such government and international agencies as NATO and the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Among his other accomplishments are helping to found the United States Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab.

Early life

Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. was born in

Military Attaché.[3] This allowed him to skip a couple of grades along the way, so that he graduated from Leavenworth High School in Leavenworth, Kansas, at the age of 15.[1]

Ramsey's parents hoped that he would go to West Point, but at 15, he was too young to be admitted. He was awarded a scholarship to the

J.J. Thomson.[1] At Cambridge, he took the tripos in order to study quantum mechanics, which had not been covered at Columbia, resulting in being awarded a second BA degree by Cambridge.[6]

A term paper Ramsey wrote for Goldhaber on

Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., where he studied neutron-proton and proton-helium scattering.[1]

World War II

Radiation laboratory

The Northrop P-61 Black Widow night fighter was specifically designed to take advantage of the new radar.

In 1940, he married Elinor Jameson of

Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop this technology.[11] Ramsey was one of the scientists recruited by Rabi for this work.[12]

Initially, Ramsey was in Rabi's magnetron group. When Rabi became a division head, Ramsey became the group leader.

Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson.[6]

Manhattan Project

In 1943, Ramsey was approached by

Los Alamos Laboratory with Ramsey as group leader, with the task of integrating the design and delivery of the nuclear weapons being built by the laboratory.[15]

Ramsey signs the Fat Man used at Nagasaki.

The first thing he had to do was determine the characteristics of the aircraft that would be used. There were only two

SCR-584 ground-based radar set of the kind that Ramsey had helped develop at the Radiation laboratory. Numerous problems were discovered with the bombs and the aircraft modifications, and corrected.[17]

Ramsey's Los Alamos badge

Plans for the delivery of the weapons in combat were assigned to the Weapons Committee, which was chaired by Ramsey, and answerable to

bombing of Hiroshima to Groves in Washington, D.C.[20]

Research

At the end of the war, Ramsey returned to Columbia as a professor and research scientist.

Mt. Holyoke College and the University of Virginia. During the 1950s, he was the first science adviser to NATO, and initiated a series of fellowships, grants and summer school programs to train European scientists.[1][6][21]

The Harvard cyclotron during construction in 1948. Shown are Ramsey (left) and Lee Davenport (right).

Ramsey's research in the immediate post-war years looked at measuring fundamental properties of atoms and molecules by use of molecular beams. On moving to Harvard, his objective was to carry out accurate molecular beam magnetic resonance experiments, based on the techniques developed by Rabi. However, the accuracy of the measurements depended on the uniformity of the magnetic field, and Ramsey found that it was difficult to create sufficiently uniform magnetic fields. He developed the separated oscillatory field method in 1949 as a means of achieving the accuracy he wanted.[1]

Ramsey and his PhD student

cesium-133 atom; the atomic clock which is used to set this standard is an application of Ramsey's work.[22] He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 "for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks".[23] The Prize was shared with Hans Georg Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul.[23]

In collaboration with the

assassination of President John F. Kennedy.[24]

Later life

Ramsey eventually became the

Nobel laureates endorsing John Kerry for President of the United States as someone who would "restore science to its appropriate place in government".[29]

His first wife, Elinor, died in 1983, after which he married Ellie Welch of Brookline, Massachusetts. Ramsey died on November 4, 2011. He was survived by his wife Ellie, his four daughters from his first marriage, and his stepdaughter and stepson from his second marriage.[7][24]

Bibliography

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Norman F. Ramsey – Autobiography". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved June 13, 2013.
  2. ^ Cullum 1950, p. 101.
  3. ^ Cullum 1930, pp. 669–670.
  4. ^ Cullum 1940, pp. 167–168.
  5. ^ a b "Norman F. Ramsey". Soylent Communications. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  6. ^ a b c d e f "Norman F. Ramsey, an oral history conducted in 1991 by John Bryant". IEEE History Center. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  7. ^ a b c Tucker, Anthony (November 18, 2011). "Norman Ramsey obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved February 13, 2010.
  8. ^ "Isidor Isaac Rabi". Nobel Media. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
  9. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.56.728
    .
  10. PMID 22158235
    .
  11. ^ Conant 2002, pp. 209–213.
  12. ^ Conant 2002, p. 204.
  13. ^ Rigden 1987, pp. 135–135.
  14. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 59.
  15. ^ a b c Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 378–379.
  16. ^ Groves 1962, p. 254.
  17. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 380–382.
  18. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, p. 248.
  19. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 387–388.
  20. ^ Hoddeson et al. 1993, pp. 392–393.
  21. ^
    National Geographic. Archived from the original
    on November 12, 2011. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  22. ^ "Nobel Prize press release". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved June 13, 2013.
  23. ^ a b "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1989". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved June 13, 2013.
  24. ^
    New York Times
    . November 6, 2011. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
  25. American Academy of Achievement
    .
  26. ^ "Norman Foster Ramsey". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved December 16, 2022.
  27. ^ "Norman F. Ramsey". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved December 16, 2022.
  28. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved December 16, 2022.
  29. ^ "48 Nobel Winning Scientists Endorse Kerry-June 21, 2004". George Washington University. Retrieved July 6, 2013.

References

External links

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