The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was jointly awarded today to Dr. Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Dr. Arthur B. McDonald of Canada, for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass. Professor Kajita was the leader of the Super-Kamiokande experiment, and Professor McDonald the Director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observator (SNO), an experiment in which the University of Pennsylvania group played a critical role.
Professor Eugene Beier was the U.S. co-spokesperson for the Collaboration, and Professor Joshua Klein led the data analysis that produced the first results showing that neutrinos oscillated. With instrumentation specialists Richard Van Berg and Mitchell Newcomer, the Penn group built state-of-the-art data acquisition electronics which were used to read out the photon detectors. Many Penn graduate students and post-docs over the years made important contributions to SNO, from the electronics design to sophisticated data analysis tools.
*The research on SNO was funded by the Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics*
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