2003/08/08 by R. Davis · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Neutrino Physics Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/revmodphys.75.985
openalex publication_date 2003/08/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
Neutrinos are neutral, nearly massless particles that move at nearly the speed of light and easily pass through matter. Wolfgang Pauli (1945 Nobel Laureate in Physics) postulated the existence of the neutrino in 1930 as a way of carrying away missing energy, momentum, and spin in beta decay. In 1933, Enrico Fermi (1938 Nobel Laureate in Physics) named the neutrino (‘‘little neutral one’ ’ in Italian) and incorporated it into his theory of beta decay. The Sun derives its energy from fusion reactions in which hydrogen is transformed into helium. Every time four protons are turned into a helium nucleus, two neutrinos are produced. These neutrinos take only two seconds to reach the surface of the Sun and another eight minutes or so to reach the Earth. Thus, neutrinos tell us what happened in the center of the Sun eight minutes ago. The Sun produces a lot of neutrinos, 1.8�10 39 per second: even at the Earth, 150 million kilometers from the Sun, about 100 billion pass through an average fingernail (1 cm 2) every second. They pass through the Earth as if it weren’t there, and the atoms in the human body capture a neutrino about every seventy years, or once in a lifetime. As we will see, neutrinos captured me early in my career. I received my Ph.D. from Yale in 1942 in physical chemistry (Davis, 1942) and went directly into the Army as a reserve officer. After the war, I decided to search for a position in research with the view of applying chemistry to studies in nuclear physics. After two years with the Monsanto Chemical Company in applied radiochemistry of interest to the Atomic Energy Commission, I was very fortunate in being able to join the newly created Brookhaven National Laboratory. Brookhaven was created to find peaceful uses for the atom in all fields of basic science: chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, and engineering.