See also: Davis

Raymond Davis Jr. (October 14th 1914 - May 31st 2006) is a Chimiste and a American Physicien , prize winner of the Nobel Prize of physics in 2002.

Youth and first years of career

It was born with Washington DC, where his/her father was Photographe with the National Office off Standard. His/her brother Warren, 14 month younger than, was to him an inseparable companion during all his childhood. He was graduate of Chimie to the university of Maryland with College Park in 1938. He also obtained a master in this same school and Ph.D. with the Université of Yale in physical Chimie in 1942.

He passed the main part of the years of war to the Dugway Proving Ground in the Utah, observing the test results of chemical weapons and exploring the basin of the Big lake Salted to seek traces of his predecessor, the Lac Bonneville.

Career of physicist

To its exit of the army in 1946, it went to work at the Mound laboratory of the chemical company Monsanto, in Miamisburg in the Ohio, making Radiochimie applied on behalf of the Commission to American atomic energy. In 1948, it joined the National laboratory of Brookhaven, which aimed to find uses peaceful of the atomic energy.

Davis reports that him for " had been asked; to find something of interesting there to work, " and it dedicated its career to the study of the Neutrino S, particles whose existence had been predicted to explain the process of the Radioactivité β, but whose separate existence had not been confirmed. Davis tried to detect the neutrinos by the opposite radioactivity beta, reaction by which a neutrino provides enough energy to a core to transform certain stable isotopes into radioactive isotopes. As the kinetics of this reaction is very slow, the number of radioactive atoms created in the experiments on the neutrinos is very weak, and Davis started to study the rates of the reactions other than the radioactivity opposite beta which could imitate the signal of the neutrinos. Using cans and tanks of Carbon tetrachloride like detectors, Davis studied the production rate of Argon ³⁷ according to altitude and the depth under the surface of the ground. It installed a detector containing of the chlorine atoms on the engine of Brookhaven in 1954 and then on one of the engines Savannah River. These experiments failed to detect a more important production of radioactive argon when the engines were in service that when they were with the stop, and this report was regarded as the first experimental proof that the neutrinos (which react with the chlorine atoms) and the antineutrinos (which the engines produce) were distinct. The detection of the neutrinos appeared much more difficult than it not detection of the antineutrinos. Davis was the scientist at the origin of the Expérience Homestake, the very large detector radiochemical of neutrinos which detected for the first time the neutrinos of the sun.

It divided the Nobel Prize of physics 2002 with the physicist Japanese Masatoshi Koshiba and the American physicist Riccardo Giacconi for their contributions pioneering in Astrophysique, in particular for the detection of the cosmic Neutrino S, studying the Problème of the solar neutrinos with the Expérience Homestake.

Private life

Davis met his wife Anna Torrey in Brookhaven and together they built a sailing ship out of wooden of 7 m, baptized Halcyon . They had five children and lived more than 50 years in the same house with Blue Point, in the state of New York.

Doctor Davis died peacefully on May 31st, 2006 with Blue Point, after a long fight against the Maladie of Alzheimer.

Honorary distinctions

• Prix Cyrus B. Comstock of the National Academy off Sciences (1978)
• Prix Tom W. Bonner of the American company of physics (1988)
• Prix W.K.H. Panofsky of the American company of physics (1992)
• Prix Beatrice Mr. Tinsley of the American company of astronomy (1994)
• Prix George Ellery Hauls American company of astronomy (1996)
• Prix Wolf in physics (2000)
• National Medal off Science (2001)
• Nobel Prize of physics (2002)
• Price Enrico Fermi (2003)

See also

• Experiment Homestake

Important articles

• Davis, Raymond, Jr. " Attempt to detect the Antineutrinos from has Nuclear Reactor by the ³⁷Cl (naked bar, E) ³⁷Ar Reaction" Physical Review 97, p766 (1953) -- Not-detection off antineutrinos with chlorine
• Davis, Raymond, Jr. " Solar Neutrinos II, Experimental" Physical Review Letters 12, p300 (1964) -- Proposal for Homestake Experiment
• Cleveland, B.T. et al. " Measurement off the solar electron neutrino flow with the Homestake chlorine detector" Astrophysical Newspaper 496 p505-526 (1998) -- final results off Homestake Experiment

External bonds

• Autobiography on the site of the foundation Nobel
• Raymond Davis Jr., Brookhaven Nat' L Lab web site
• Neutrino web site by NOVA
• '' NewYork Times '' " Raymond Davis Jr., Nobelist Who Caught Neutrinos, Dies At 91" June 2,2006
• '' Boston Earth '' " Raymond Davis, who detected elusive solar particles, dies At 91" June 2,2006