German
nuclear physicist. He made fundamental contributions to molecular beam spectroscopy,
mass spectrometry, and electron acceleration technology. In 1989 he shared
the Nobel prize for physics with US scientists
Norman Ramsey and
Hans Dehmelt,
for his development of the ion trap, or Paul trap, used to store single
atoms long enough to make useful measurements.
In 1957 he helped found the famous DESY accelerator laboratory in Hamburg.
From 1964-67, Paul was director of the nuclear physics laboratory of CERN,
the joint European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva. |