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 Perl for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics. Raines, in collaboration with Clyde Cowan, was the first to detect the neutrino; 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 Pauli, but Reines and Cowan were the first to observe them.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Physics: Biographies