Last month's article looked at Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy, two computer science specialists, neither household names, but still well-known and important figures, covered in detail by Wikipedia. Until I read the recent death notice of Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr., Nobel laureate in Physics in 1989, I don't recall hearing of him. Off I went to Wikipedia, which rarely fails to cover such people in depth. But it did fail this time. Dr. Ramsey's entry is a stub, even though his article is rated as a high-priority project by WikiProject Physics and has also been recognized as within scope by two other WikiProjects (Columbia University and Biography). Ramsey's physics discoveries affect countless lives daily, but he's obscure, in spite of winning a Nobel Prize. So, what did he do?
Ramsey's Nobel Prize, shared with two others, was awarded "for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks." You are likely familiar with atomic clocks. They have fulfilled our needs for accurate timekeeping for years. Without the extreme accuracy of atomic clocks (plus or minus one second in millions of years), we wouldn't have the tools needed to keep our society synchronized. One of the most visible technologies these days which requires highly accurate clocks is the Global Positioning System. Position is measured by time differences between multiple satellite transmitters and a local receiver. A microsecond deviation leads to an error of almost 1000 feet, given the speed of light, so the clocks have to be highly accurate to achieve current GPS accuracies. The next generation of clock, quantum clocks, are just beginning to become available and promise even greater accuracy (one second in a billion years) but Ramsey's discovery was sufficient to upgrade the synchronization of the world to current levels.
Atomic clocks weren't the only world-changing application of this technology. Using Ramsey's discoveries, a technique called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy was developed. After years in science research labs, assisting scientists with material analysis applications, it was adapted to medical technology and is now commonly known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). NMR/MRI is based on the behavior of atomic nuclei when exposed to radio waves while in a magnetic field. Depending on the local physical and chemical environment, these nuclei re-emit the electromagnetic radiation at different shifted frequencies. This re-emitted radiation can then be detected and interpreted. When properly utilized, NMR/MRI devices are very sensitive probes of the local chemical and physical environment of a sample being scanned, be it a chemical compound or a human being. Different chemical compounds return characteristic shifts and abnormal biological tissue returns a different signal than healthy tissue. As NMR proved to be a major scientific analytical tool, MRI has been a major tool in modern medicine's arsenal and continued development finds new tasks it can perform.
So where can one go to find more about the obscure geniuses who win Nobel Prizes? Sometimes the most logical site proves to be one of the best. My first stop was also my last. A visit to www.nobelprize.org shows a site rich with both technical content, Nobel pageantry and the human side of the Nobel tradition. Of course, it celebrates the latest recipients of this year's prizes. Being a techie, I was familiar with this year's Prizes in Chemistry and Physics. The winner of the Chemistry Prize, Dan Shechtman, won the prize "for the discovery of quasicrystals." Shechtman suffered considerable damage to his career when he first attempted to report the findings that eventually led to his Prize. His first attempt to report his observations was rejected immediately by the "Journal of Applied Physics." His observations of odd behavior of a type of crystal was branded "impossible" by those versed in the established knowledge of the day and the embarrassment his efforts to report his findings caused eventually led to his dismissal from his research group. Twenty-nine years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for a discovery that both changed crystal theory and has led to valuable practical applications, since these quasicrystals have unusual and desirable physical properties as well as unusual crystalline properties.
The Nobel Prize for Physics this year is also momentous. Awarded to three researchers "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae," this counter-intuitive finding drastically changed our picture of what is happening to our universe. It has long been known that the universe is expanding, but a major argument was over whether the expansion is constant, or is slowing down, and thus might stop in the distant future. The idea that the expansion is actually accelerating will require much reworking of cosmology. We now consider concepts called "dark matter" and "dark energy" in order to reconcile the theories of universal expansion with previous knowledge. These "dark" concepts are not at all understood, but as science tried to grapple with them, more breakthroughs, some perhaps with tremendous practical potential, may follow. Celebrating yet another upset of the scientific applecart this year is both appropriate and exciting.
Navigating the Nobel site isn't as straightforward as it might be, but it isn't too hard once you know how things are organized. If you want to see the information for Ramsey's 1989 Physics Prize, from the main page, click "Nobel Prize in Physics" on the left sidebar and then "All Nobel Prizes in Physics." On this page, scroll down to "1989" and click on it. The Prize page will come up. Click on the dropbox "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1989" and you'll get information on the discoveries which led to the Prize, via a "Summary," "Press Release" or "Illustrated Information" link. Over time, this dropdown box will vary a bit. The 2011 Prize has links to "Popular Information" and "Advanced Information" among others, but in general, from this point, you can find what you're after quickly. If you want biographical information, you can find it under this dropbox, too.
The Nobel site has a lot more that you might find interesting. I think I'll be using the Nobel site for my rainy day infotainment in the coming months.
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Catbar - Brain Candy #168 - Unsung Heroes #12 - Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr. / Brian Rock / Mon Dec 19 20:54:32 EST 2011
