Norman Foster Ramsey Jr.
American physicist
Who was Norman Foster Ramsey Jr.?
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. Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., on, to Minna Bauer Ramsey and Norman Foster Ramsey. His mother was the daughter of German immigrants and an instructor at the University of Kansas.
His father, who was of Scottish descent, was a 1905 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an officer in the Ordnance Department who rose to the rank of brigadier general during World War II, commanding the Rock Island Arsenal. Among his other accomplishments are helping to found the United States Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab.
Historical significance
Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. was an American physicist who was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the separated oscillatory field method, which had important applications in the construction of atomic clocks.
