 = Frederick Reines = 
 
 Frederick Reines ( RYE @-@ ness ) ; ( March 16 , 1918 – August 26 , 1998 ) was an American physicist . He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co @-@ detection of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in the neutrino experiment . He may be the only scientist in history " so intimately associated with the discovery of an elementary particle and the subsequent thorough investigation of its fundamental properties " . 
 A graduate of the 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 ( Cohen ) 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 . The family later moved to North Bergen , New Jersey , residing on Kennedy Boulevard and 57th Street . Because North Bergen did not have a high school , he attended Union Hill High School in Union Hill , New Jersey , from which he graduated in 1935 . 
 From an early age , Reines exhibited an interest in science , and liked creating and building things . He later recalled that : 
 The first stirrings of interest in science that I remember occurred during a moment of boredom at religious school , when , looking out of the window at twilight through a hand curled to simulate a telescope , I noticed something peculiar about the light ; it was the phenomenon of diffraction . That began for me a fascination with light . 
 Ironically , Reines excelled in literary and history courses , but received average or low marks in science and math in his freshman year of high school , though he improved in those areas by his junior and senior years through the encouragement of a teacher who gave him a key to the school laboratory . This cultivated a love of science by his senior year . In response to a question seniors were asked about what they wanted to do for a yearbook quote , he responded : " To be a physicist extraordinaire . " 
 Reines was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , but chose instead to attend Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken , New Jersey , where he earned his Bachelor of Science ( B.S. ) degree in mechanical engineering in 1939 , and his Master of Science ( M.S. ) degree in mathematical physics in 1941 , writing a thesis on " A Critical Review of Optical Diffraction Theory " . He married Sylvia Samuels on August 30 , 1940 . They had two children , Robert and Alisa . He then entered New York University , where he earned his Doctor of Philosophy ( Ph.D. ) in 1944 . He studied cosmic rays there under Serge A. Korff , but wrote his thesis under the supervision of Richard D. Present on " Nuclear fission and the liquid drop model of the nucleus " . Publication of the thesis was delayed until after the end of World War II ; it appeared in Physical Review in 1946 . 
 
 = = Los Alamos Laboratory = = 
 
 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 . He joined Feynman 's T @-@ 4 ( Diffusion Problems ) Group , which was part of Hans Bethe 's T ( Theoretical ) Division . Diffusion was an important aspect of critical mass calculations . In June 1946 , he became a group leader , heading the T @-@ 1 ( Theory of Dragon ) Group . An outgrowth of the " tickling the Dragon 's tail " experiment , the Dragon was a machine that could attain a critical state for short bursts of time , which could be used as a research tool or power source . 
 Reines participated in a number of nuclear tests , and writing reports on their results . These included Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll in 1946 , Operation Sandstone at Eniwetok Atoll in 1948 , and Operation Ranger and Operation Buster – Jangle at the Nevada Test Site . In 1951 he was the director of Operation Greenhouse series of nuclear tests in the Pacific . This saw the first American tests of boosted fission weapons , an important step towards thermonuclear weapons . He studied the effects of nuclear blasts , and co @-@ authored a paper with John von Neumann on Mach stem formation , an important aspect of an air blast wave . 
 In spite or perhaps because of his role in these nuclear tests , Reines was concerned about the dangers of radioactive pollution from atmospheric nuclear tests , and became an advocate of underground nuclear testing . In the wake of the Sputnik crisis , he participated in John Archibald Wheeler 's Project 137 , which evolved into JASON . He was also a delegate at the Atoms for Peace Conference in Geneva in 1958 . 
 
 = = Discovery of the neutrino and the inner workings of stars = = 
 
 The neutrino was a subatomic particle first proposed theoretically by Wolfgang Pauli on December 4 , 1930 , to explain undetected energy that escaped during beta decay when neutron decayed into a proton and an electron so that the law of conservation of energy was not violated . Enrico Fermi renamed it the neutrino , Italian for " little neutral one " , and in 1934 , proposed his theory of beta decay which explained that the electrons emitted from the nucleus were created by the decay of a neutron into a proton , an electron , and a neutrino : 
 n0 → p + + e − + ν 
 e 
 The neutrino accounted for the missing energy , but Fermi 's theory described a particle with little mass and no electric charge that would be difficult 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 . " In 1951 , at the conclusion of the Greenhouse test series , Reines received permission from the head of T Division , J. Carson Mark , for a leave in residence to study fundamental physics . Reines and his colleague Clyde Cowan decided to see if they could detect neutrinos . " 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 : 
 ν 
 e + p + → n0 + e + 
 The positron would soon be annihilated by an electron and produce two 0 @.@ 51 MeV gamma rays , while the neutron would be captured by a proton and release a 2 @.@ 2 MeV gamma ray . This would produce a distinctive signature that could be detected . They then realised that by adding cadmium salt to their liquid scintillator to enhance the neutron capture reaction , resulting in a 9 MeV burst of gamma rays . For a neutrino source , they proposed using an atomic bomb . Permission for this was obtained from the laboratory director , Norris Bradbury . 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 . 
 In 1953 , they made their first attempts using one of the large reactors at the Hanford nuclear site in what is now known as the Cowan – Reines neutrino experiment . Their detector now included 300 litres ( 66 imp gal ; 79 US gal ) of scintillating fluid and 90 photomultiplier tubes , but the effort was frustrated by background noise from cosmic rays . With encouragement from John A. Wheeler , they tried again in 1955 , this time using one of the newer , larger 700 MW reactors at the Savannah River Site that emitted a high neutrino flux of 1 @.@ 2 x 1012 / cm2 sec . They also had a convenient , well @-@ shielded location 11 metres ( 36 ft ) from the reactor and 12 metres ( 39 ft ) underground . On June 14 , 1956 , they were able to send Pauli a telegram announcing that the neutrino had been found . When Bethe was informed that he had been proven wrong , he said , " Well , you shouldn ’ t believe everything you read in the papers . " 
 From then on 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 future researchers to come . Cowan left Los Alamos in 1957 to teach at George Washington University , ending their collaboration . On the basis of his work in first detecting the neutrino , Reines became the head of the physics department of Case Western Reserve University from 1959 to 1966 . At Case , he led a group that was the first to detect neutrinos created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays . 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 . 
 In 1966 , Reines took most of his neutrino research team with him when he left for the new University of California , Irvine ( UCI ) , becoming its first dean of physical sciences . At UCI , Reines extended the research interests of some of his graduate students into the development of medical radiation detectors , such as for measuring total radiation delivered to the whole human body in radiation therapy . 
 Reines had prepared for the possibility of measuring the distant events of a supernova explosion . Supernova explosions are rare , but Reines thought he might be lucky enough to see one in his lifetime , and be able to catch the neutrinos streaming from it in his specially @-@ designed detectors . During his wait for a supernova to explode , he put signs on some of his large neutrino detectors , calling them " Supernova Early Warning Systems " . 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 . Normally , the detectors recorded only a few background events each day . The supernova registered 19 events in just ten seconds . This discovery is regarded as inaugurating the field of neutrino astronomy . 
 In 1995 , Reines was honored , along with Martin L. Perl with the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with Cowan in first detecting the neutrino . Unfortunately , Cowan had died in 1974 , and the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously . Reines also received many other awards , including the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1981 , 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 . He remained dean of physical sciences at UCI until 1974 , and became a professor emeritus in 1988 , but he continued teaching until 1991 , and remained on UCI 's faculty until his death . 
 
 = = Death = = 
 
 Reines died after a long illness at the University of California , Irvine Medical Center in Orange , California , on August 26 , 1998 . He was survived by his wife and children . His papers are in the UCI Libraries . Reines Hall at UCI 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 ) . 
 Reines , F. ( 1991 ) . Neutrinos and Other Matters : Selected Works of Frederick Reines . Teaneck , N.J. : World Scientific . ISBN 978 @-@ 981 @-@ 02 @-@ 0392 @-@ 4 . 
 
 