Extending and refining the nuclear mass surface with ISOLTRAP

The Penning-trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP has received ISOLDE beams for the past 30 years! Following the move of ISOLDE to the proton-synchrotron booster site, ISOLTRAP has pioneered almost all of the techniques now associated with on-line ion trapping and manipulation for precision measurements of atomic masses. After an introduction on physics motivation, a brief history and description of the ISOLTRAP spectrometer is given, followed by an overview of the numerous developments and scientific results achieved since the previous ISOLDE Laboratory Portrait. (paper)