Clinton Names Prof. to Council

President Bill Clinton last week announced his intent to appoint Higgins Professor of Physics Emeritus Norman F. Ramsey to the presidential committee charged with selecting recipients of the National Medal of Science Award.

The annual award is considered the American equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Ramsey, who is regarded as one of the most influential physicists of his time, should have no trouble choosing future medal winners. Early in 1989 he himself won the National Medal of Science Award, an honor followed several months later with a Nobel Prize in physics.

With these two triumphs already under his belt along with a laundry list of other awards that span his long career, the 84-year-old physicist said he is nonchalant about this most recent honor and called it a "very minor thing."

Although the formal announcement of his appointment occurred just last Wednesday, Ramsey said he had known of President Clinton's intent to appoint him to the committee for about a year.

But despite his understatement, colleagues said Ramsey is deserving of all his honors.

"Norman Ramsey is amazing," Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics Howard Georgi '68, also master of Leverett House, wrote in an e-mail message.

"He has also been a tireless worker on a variety of boards and committees that keep national and international science running," he added.

With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Ramsey joined Harvard's Faculty as Higgins professor of physics in 1957.

Since then, he has been at the forefront of physics research.

During World War II, Ramsey developed the delivery system for the atomic bomb, a job that included choosing and modifying the allies' airplanes.

His work has also focused on the physics of measuring time.

His discovery of the physics behind the atomicclock, an extremely precise time measurementsystem, won him the Nobel Prize in physics andhalf of the $469,000 monetary award he shared withtwo other scientists.

But Ramsey is perhaps best known for his workthat contributed to the creation of a technologyknown as the Global Positioning System (GPS). Withvast military and lay applications, GPS allowspeople to pinpoint their geographic location witha small handheld device.

Although officially a professor emeritus,Ramsey has continued to play an active role at theUniversity. On Saturday he presented a lecture ata symposium celebrating 50 years of proton beamsat the Harvard cyclotron laboratory.

Ramsey said he envisions working at theUniversity for an additional 10 years.

"I've still got plenty I want to do here," hesaid.

Professor of Physics Gerald Gabrielse saidRamsey is a "vigorous" scholar and person, despitehis age.

"I can tell he's getting older because when wewalk across campus, I can just about keep up,"Gabrielse quipped. "He's a real class act, Normanis.

His discovery of the physics behind the atomicclock, an extremely precise time measurementsystem, won him the Nobel Prize in physics andhalf of the $469,000 monetary award he shared withtwo other scientists.

But Ramsey is perhaps best known for his workthat contributed to the creation of a technologyknown as the Global Positioning System (GPS). Withvast military and lay applications, GPS allowspeople to pinpoint their geographic location witha small handheld device.

Although officially a professor emeritus,Ramsey has continued to play an active role at theUniversity. On Saturday he presented a lecture ata symposium celebrating 50 years of proton beamsat the Harvard cyclotron laboratory.

Ramsey said he envisions working at theUniversity for an additional 10 years.

"I've still got plenty I want to do here," hesaid.

Professor of Physics Gerald Gabrielse saidRamsey is a "vigorous" scholar and person, despitehis age.

"I can tell he's getting older because when wewalk across campus, I can just about keep up,"Gabrielse quipped. "He's a real class act, Normanis.