August 27, 1915 – Birth of Norman Foster Ramsey, his research led to the discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance and the atomic clock

With a degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Physics, he met and worked with important scientists who were the driving force behind atomic physics, such as Lord Rutherford, Maurice Goldhaber, Edward Appleton, Max Born, Edward Bullard, James Chadwick, John Cockcroft, Paul Dirac, Arthur Eddington, Ralph Fowler, Mark Oliphant, and J.J. Thomson.

He worked closely with Isidor Isaac Rabi, (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944), generating his interest in molecular beams. Rabi himself applied his magnetic resonance technique to the study of atomic structure and its characteristic frequencies, but it was Ramsey who was instrumental in its practical application. He introduced an improvement based on the use of two separate fields that induce atomic oscillations in two different regions which, when interfering with each other, provide an image of very high resolution. In other words, the application of these external fields allows us to read the oscillation frequencies of atoms and transform them into images or precise witnesses of the passage of time.

Ramsey and Rabi's team led them to invent molecular beam resonance spectroscopy and shared the discovery that the deuteron was a magnetic quadruple. This meant that the atomic nucleus was not spherical, as previously thought.

n 1989, he shared the Nobel Prize with Hans Georg Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul, for their method of separate oscillatory fields, which made the development of the atomic clock possible. Curiously, he had already retired in 1986.

The two most important technological applications based on his discoveries are nuclear magnetic resonance and the atomic clock. The former has become a major medical diagnostic technique, now commonly used in traumatology, but in combination with other CT scans is providing images of brain dynamics that promise important advances in the early detection of degenerative brain diseases; the latter led to the development of the caesium atomic clock, which in 1967 was adopted as a standard of time measurement.

Although the image of a scientist obsessed with discovering the essential properties of matter and their practical applications perfectly defines Ramsey's personality, his biography has a lesser-known extra-scientific aspect.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click here: Norman Foster Ramsey