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 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.