Canada’s Arthur McDonald and Takaaki Kajita of Japan have won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work discovering neutrino oscillations. McDonald is a professor emeritus at Queen’s University and has been director at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNOLAB), in central Canada. He continues to research neutrinos.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the prize on October 6, 2015. The two scientists will split the award of $1.26 million Canadian dollars.
Findings ‘changed our understanding’
The two men were lauded for their contributions to experiments demonstrating that the subatomic particles called neutrinos change identities. The finding that they transform themselves has “changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter,” said the academy.
McDonald was born in Sydney, in the eastern province of Nova Scotia. He studied at the California Institute of Technology, was a researcher at Canada’s Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, and became a professor at Princeton University in the U.S.
He became a professor at Queen’s University in Ontario in 1989 and began to plan the experiment to determine whether neutrinos have mass.
McDonald told reporters winning the Nobel Prize was “a daunting experience.”
See video about SNOLAB and work on neutrinos.
Hear interview with Arthur McDonald.
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