Wolfgang Paul shared half of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hans G. Dehmelt "for the development of the ion trap technique.” The other half of the prize was won by Norman F. Ramsey "for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks." Wolfgang Paul in his early career studied the nuclear moments of beryllium atoms, developed a linear quadrupole mass spectrometer, conducted scattering experiments with high-energy electrons, studied electron disintegration of the deuteron atom, and measured the lamb shift. In his Nobel lecture he describes that he got the idea to build traps from his work in molecular beam physics, mass spectrometry, and particle accelerator physics, extending his two dimension localizations to three dimensions.
