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Born on this day
Wolfgang Paul
Wolfgang Paul was a German physicist and a Nobel Prize winner.
32nd week in year
10 August 2018

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Wolfgang Paul10.8.1913

Wikipedia (26 Jul 2013, 15:46)

Wolfgang Paul (August 10, 1913 – December 7, 1993) was a German physicist, who co-developed the non-magnetic quadrupole mass filter which laid the foundation for what we now call an ion trap. He shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for this work with Hans Georg Dehmelt; the other half of the Prize in that year was awarded to Norman Foster Ramsey.


Early life

Wolfgang Paul was born on 10 August 1913 in Lorenzkirch, Germany. He grew up in Munich where his father was a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry. After the first few years at the Technical University of Munich, he changed to the Technical University of Berlin in 1934 where he finished his Diploma in 1937 at the group of Hans Geiger. He followed his doctorate adviser Hans Kopfermann to the University of Kiel and after being drafted to the air force he finished his PhD in 1940 at the Technical University of Berlin.

During World War II, he researched isotope separation, which is necessary to produce fissionable material for use in making nuclear weapons.


Academic career

For several years he was a private lecturer at the University of Göttingen with Hans Kopfermann. He became a professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Bonn and stayed there from 1952 until 1993. For two years from 1965 to 1967 he was director of the Division of Nuclear Physics at CERN.

   
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