Reines, Frederick
Reines, Frederick,
1918–99, American physicist, b. Paterson, N.J., Ph.D. New York Univ., 1944. He was a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1944–59), a professor at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve Univ.) (1959–66), and a professor at the Univ. of California, Irvine, until his death in 1999. Reines shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics with Martin PerlPerl, Martin Lewis,1927–2014, American physicist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ph.D. Columbia, 1955. He was a professor at the Univ. of Michigan from 1955 to 1963, when he accepted a position at Stanford; he retired as professor emeritus there in 2004.
..... Click the link for more information. for pioneering experimental contributions to leptonlepton
[Gr.,=light (i.e., lightweight)], class of elementary particles that includes the electron and its antiparticle, the muon and its antiparticle, the tau and its antiparticle, and the neutrino and antineutrino associated with each of these particles.
..... Click the link for more information. physics. Raines, in collaboration with Clyde Cowan, was the first to detect the neutrinoneutrino
[Ital.,=little neutral (particle)], elementary particle with no electric charge and a very small mass emitted during the decay of certain other particles. The neutrino was first postulated in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli in order to maintain the law of conservation of energy
..... Click the link for more information. ; the two scientists also conducted a comprehensive investigation of its properties. One of the fundamental particles that make up the universe, neutrinos are similar to electrons but electrically neutral. Their existence had been postulated in the 1930s by Wolfgang PauliPauli, Wolfgang
, 1900–1958, Austro-American physicist, b. Vienna. He studied first with A. Sommerfeld at Munich and then with Niels Bohr at Copenhagen. After lecturing (1923–28) at the Univ.
..... Click the link for more information. , but Reines and Cowan were the first to observe them.