Former physics professor receives Nobel Prize

Arthur McDonald, former physics professor at the University, received the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for his work in subatomic physics along with University of Tokyo physicist Takaaki Kajita for the discovery of neutrino oscillation, which revealed that neutrinos have mass.

Neutrinos are basic subatomic particles, like quarks.

McDonald, who lectured at the University from 1982 to 1989, is currently a professor emeritus of physics at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. McDonald received both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, respectively in 1964 and 1965.

He joined the University’s physics department to conduct research on particle physics.

The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded 108 times to 199 physicists. The Nobel Committee for Physics, which is appointed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, sends out confidential forms to its nominees and then screens the nominees’ choices.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Science did not respond to requests for comment.

“It’s very satisfying and all my colleagues are feeling the same way,” McDonald said on how he felt receiving the award.

McDonald explained that while he was director of Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Institute on neutrinos from the Sun, he had noticed large numbers of neutrinos from the Sun that were very difficult to detect.

“These neutrinos can pass through the sun with very little or no stopping,” McDonald said. “There was a great puzzle to solve – only 1/3 of the predicted amount of neutrinos were detected.”

He explained that his research proved that neutrinos change from one type to another, which was the reason why the detector wasn't able to accurately measure the amount of neutrinos.

“At the same time that we found a fundamental property of neutrinos, we verified that our model of the Sun was very accurate,” he said.

McDonald said that it was the quality of the physics department and its faculty that brought him to Princeton in the 1980s. He noted that his work is actually not completely new in the area, but is built upon a foundation of information constructed by the former University professor John Bahcall.

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Bachall pioneered the research on solar neutrinos and developed a detector for underground neutrinos. He died in 2005.

“It was not in the cards when I was there. It was something that developed later,” McDonald said.

He added that his research indicates that further experimentation may also yield results in the field of theoretical astrophysics, particularly in the realm of dark matter.

“We are pursuing an experiment to study the neutrino in double beta decay in the hopes of making a measurement of its absolute mass,” he said, noting that he will be in Princeton next week to collaborate with professors in the physics department.

He also said that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be a physicist, but was convinced once he took first-year physics.

“I had a marvelous time that made it interesting,” he said. “I also discovered that I could do it, trying to solve real problems of how the world works. I was able to do that and it was fun.”

He added that his research indicates that further experimentation may also yield results in the field of theoretical astrophysics, particularly in the realm of dark matter, noting that he and his colleagues are currently pursuing an experiment to study the neutrino in double beta decay in the hopes of making a measurement of its absolute mass.

“We don’t do this to win awards, we do this in order to do better science,” McDonald said.