Frederick Reines ( ;

A graduate of Stevens Institute of Technology and New York University, Reines joined the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory in 1944, working in the Theoretical Division in Richard Feynman's group. He became a group leader there in 1946. He participated in a number of nuclear tests, culminating in his becoming the director of the Operation Greenhouse test series in the Pacific in 1951.

In the early 1950s, working in Hanford and Savannah River Sites, Reines and Cowan developed the equipment and procedures with which they first detected the supposedly undetectable neutrinos in June 1956. Reines dedicated the major part of his career to the study of the neutrino's properties and interactions, which work would influence study of the neutrino for many researchers to come. This included the detection of neutrinos created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays, and the 1987 detection of neutrinos emitted from Supernova SN1987A, which inaugurated the field of neutrino astronomy.

Early life

Frederick Reines was born in Paterson, New Jersey, one of four children of Gussie () and Israel Reines. His parents were Jewish emigrants from the same town in Russia, but only met in New York City, where they were later married. He had an older sister, Paula, who became a doctor, and two older brothers, David and William, who became lawyers. He said that his "early education was strongly influenced" by his studious siblings. He was the great-nephew of the Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, the founder of Mizrachi, a religious Zionist movement.

The family moved to Hillburn, New York, where his father ran the general store, and he spent much of his childhood. He was an Eagle Scout. Looking back, Reines said: "My early childhood memories center around this typical American country store and life in a small American town, including Independence Day July celebrations marked by fireworks and patriotic music played from a pavilion bandstand."

Reines sang in a chorus, and as a soloist. For a time he considered the possibility of a singing career, and was instructed by a vocal coach from the Metropolitan Opera who provided lessons for free because the family did not have the money for them. he attended Union Hill High School in Union Hill, New Jersey (today Union City, New Jersey), Publication of the thesis was delayed until after the end of World War II; it appeared in Physical Review in 1946.

Los Alamos Laboratory

thumb|upright=0.7|Frederick Reines Los Alamos badge

thumb|right|[[Operation Greenhouse – Dog shot]]

In 1944 Richard Feynman recruited Reines to work in the Theoretical Division at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, where he would remain for the next fifteen years.

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The neutrino accounted for the missing energy, but Fermi's theory described a particle with little mass and no electric charge that appeared to be impossible to observe directly. In a 1934 paper, Rudolf Peierls and Hans Bethe calculated that neutrinos could easily pass through the Earth, and concluded "there is no practically possible way of observing the neutrino."

thumb|Frederick Reines (far right) with Clyde Cowan (far left) and other members of Project Poltergeist

In 1951, Reines and his colleague Clyde Cowan decided to see if they could detect neutrinos and so prove their existence. At the conclusion of the Greenhouse test series, Reines had received permission from the head of T Division, J. Carson Mark, for a leave in residence to study fundamental physics. "So why did we want to detect the free neutrino?" he later explained, "Because everybody said, you couldn't do it."

According to Fermi's theory, there was also a corresponding reverse reaction, in which a neutrino combines with a proton to create a neutron and a positron: Work began on digging a shaft for the experiment when J. M. B. Kellogg convinced them to use a nuclear reactor instead of a bomb. Although a less intense source of neutrinos, it had the advantage in allowing for multiple experiments to be carried out over a long period of time. Reines had a booming voice, and had been a singer since childhood. During this time, besides performing his duties as a research supervisor and chairman of the physics department, Reines sang in the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under the direction of Robert Shaw in performances with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. they worked together with South African physicist Friedel Sellschop of the University of Witwatersrand. In 1987, neutrinos emitted from Supernova SN1987A were detected by the Irvine–Michigan–Brookhaven (IMB) Collaboration, which used an 8,000 ton Cherenkov detector located in a salt mine near Cleveland. the National Medal of Science in 1985, the Bruno Rossi Prize in 1989, the Michelson–Morley Award in 1990, the Panofsky Prize in 1992, and the Franklin Medal in 1992. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1980 and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1994.

Death

thumb|right|Frederick Reines Hall at the University of California, Irvine houses the Physics and Astronomy Department, and part of the Chemistry Department.

Reines died after a long illness at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center in Orange, California, on August 26, 1998. Frederick Reines Hall, which houses the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of California, Irvine, was named in his honor.

Publications

  • Reines, F. & C. L. Cowan Jr. "On the Detection of the Free Neutrino", Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (through predecessor agency Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory), United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (August 6, 1953).
  • Reines, F., Cowan, C. L. Jr., Carter, R. E., Wagner, J. J. & M. E. Wyman. "The Free Antineutrino Absorption Cross Section. Part I. Measurement of the Free Antineutrino Absorption Cross Section. Part II. Expected Cross Section from Measurements of Fission Fragment Electron Spectrum", Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (through predecessor agency Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory), United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (June 1958).
  • Reines, F., Gurr, H. S., Jenkins, T. L. & J. H. Munsee. "Neutrino Experiments at Reactors", University of California-Irvine, Case Western Reserve University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (September 9, 1968).
  • Roberts, A., Blood, H., Learned, J. & F. Reines. "Status and Aims of the DUMAND Neutrino Project: the Ocean as a Neutrino Detector", Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Energy Research and Development Administration), (July 1976).

Notes

See also

  • List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

  • Guide to the Frederick Reines Papers. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
  • including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1995 The Neutrino: From Poltergeist to Particle