BOSTON—Norman Ramsey, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in physics for his research into molecules and atoms that led to the creation of the atomic clock, has died.
His wife says the emeritus professor of physics at Harvard University died in his sleep at a Wayland nursing home on Friday. He was 96.
Ramsey wrote in his autobiography for the Nobel Prize he shared with Hans Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul that he was inspired by failure in molecular beam magnetic resonance experiments to invent the separated oscillatory field method in the 1960s.
The method was used to develop the world's most accurate timekeeper, the cesium atomic clock.
Ramsey taught at Harvard for four decades. During World War II, the West Point graduate's son worked on radar and the Manhattan Project.
