The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2015 is going to two scientists for their key experiments of subatomic particles known as neutrinos. They are Arthur B. McDonald, professor emeritus of Queen’s University in Canada and affiliate professor of physics at the University of Hawaiʻi, and Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo in Japan. Both winners have important ties to UH.
According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Kajita’s and McDonald’s experiments demonstrated that neutrinos change identities and have mass. “The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe,” the academy said in a release.
“We are thrilled that the two 2015 Nobel Laureates in Physics have strong ties to UH Mānoa,” said UH Mānoa Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman. “In fact, Professor McDonald is scheduled to return to campus in early 2016, when he will continue his work with the High Energy Physics Group and, hopefully, will participate in a Nobel Prize celebration and possible public lecture. We join the world in congratulating the Nobel winners and our Department of Physics and Astronomy.”
Arthur B. McDonald
Since 2010, McDonald has been an affiliate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UH Mānoa. He typically spends about three months every year at UH Mānoa giving seminars and colloquia and brainstorming on neutrino physics and dark matter with members of the university’s High Energy Physics Group. In 2001, McDonald led a group that demonstrated that neutrinos from the Sun changed identity by the time they arrived at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada.
“It’s an honor for us in the SNO collaboration to share the Nobel Prize with the Super-Kamiokande collaboration in which my colleagues at the University of Hawaiʻi have played such a major role,” said McDonald. “I enjoy discussing physics with and learning from the UH experimental and theoretical particle physicists.”
Takaaki Kajita
Kajita presented the discovery that neutrinos from the atmosphere switch identities from experiments done with the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan. He was the leader of the analysis group of a collaboration of about 100 people. Early analysis of this work was carried out by UH Professor John Learned and students. UH physics PhD student John Flannagan wrote the first dissertation including the Super-Kamiokande’s groundbreaking results.
“We are proud of our association with these two top physicists and the revolution in fundamental physics touched off by their groups’ discoveries,” said UH’s Learned.
The analysis methods developed at UH have become standard in the field of neutrino oscillations. The theory work of UH Professor Sandip Pakvasa and others in the UH High Energy Physics Group has been closely associated with both the Super-Kamiokande and Sudbury Neutrino Observatory efforts.
For more information about the Hawaiʻi connection with the initial Super-Kamiokande discovery, click here.
—By Kelli Trifonovitch
