Hans Dehmelt has devoted his career as a physicist to developing means of performing highly precise, accurate atomic measurements. In pursuit of this goal, Dehmelt devised a trap that for the first time isolated a single electron, which in turn made possible the precise experimental measurements that verified the theory of quantum electrodynamics. For his work, Dehmelt was honored with a share in the 1989 Nobel Prize in physics.

The son of Georg Karl and Asta Ella Klemmt Dehmelt, Hans Georg Dehmelt was born on September 9, 1922, in Görlitz, Germany. An early interest in the workings of radios led Dehmelt to the study of physics, which was interrupted by service in the German army and a period as a prisoner of war in France during World War II. After the war, Dehmelt continued his studies in physics at the University of Göttingen, financing himself in part...