[time-nuts] Norman Ramsey

Fuqua, Bill L wlfuqu00 at uky.edu
Thu Feb 9 02:04:48 UTC 2012


  Just a month ago I found out that Norman Ramsey had died.
I met and talked with him about 20 some odd years ago before he recieved the Nobel Prize for Physics.
He talked about the first Magentron that he ever saw which was a secret weapon brought to
the US to be tested and worked with to make high resolution radar. He was at MIT at the time.
  He was an interesting fellow to talk to. One of our faculty at the University of Kentucky was
one of his graduate students when he was working on the atomic frequency standard. When
he received the check, many years after he developed the "atomic clock" he gave about half
to his graduate students that had worked with him. He worked out a deal to purchase a number of
computers, and each of these guys got one. The one Dr. McAdam got was an AT&T 16 bit system.
Fairly fancy at the time. 
  I have a couple of Rubidium sources and think about my short discussion with him at the time.
His graduate student was  a ham but Dr. Ramsey never was. Dr. McAdam did a great deal of
research in atomic physics at UofK before he retired a couple of years ago.
73
Bill wa4lav
  



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