AWARD: Canadian physicist shares Nobel for work done at SNO lab

ONTARIO –Dr. Arthur B. McDonald is a co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was recognized for work he did at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (the SNO lab) deep in the Creighton mine in Sudbury. He shares the prize with Japanese researcher Dr. Takaaki Kajita.

The two men conducted separate but complementary experiments that showed that neutrinos have mass and can switch from one type of neutrino – electron, muon and tau – to another. Such a switch was thought to be mathematically impossible. Understanding that this happens will compel researchers to change their standard model (that neutrinos are without mass) as they attempt to understand the workings of the universe at atomic levels.

McDonald is professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON. He holds the Gordon and Patricia Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics.