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Neutrino Nobel winner Art McDonald nabs second big physics prize
Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
More from Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: November 9, 2015 | Last Updated: November 9, 2015 9:22 AM EST
Professor Arthur B. McDonald of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Julie Oliver / Ottawa Citizen
One month after winning the Nobel prize in physics, Art McDonald of Queen’s University has won a share of the U.S. $3-million Breakthrough Prize in physics.
Announced Sunday night at a private ceremony in Berkeley, California, the Breakthrough Prizes in physics, mathematics and life sciences will be celebrated Monday. There’s a day-long event of science symposia and awards ceremonies.
McDonald insisted after the Nobel win that he won through the combined effort of a large team, and the new award recognizes this. The physics award goes to five teams that all worked on tiny particles called neutrinos, and the award’s $3-million prize is to be shared by all 1,300 members of the five teams. If it’s divided equally, it comes to $2,307 each, or a little more than $3,000 in Canadian dollars.
The other physics winners are teams from Daya Bay in China, and three from Japan: KamLAND, K2K / T2K, and Super-Kamiokande.
McDonald’s team, some of them from Carleton University, founded the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in an active nickel mine two kilometres deep in Sudbury. Its first role — the one that won the Nobel — was to detect and understand neutrinos coming from the sun. Neutrinos interact so little with other matter that they are very hard to detect.
The Sudbury team was able to determine that neutrinos change their type as they travel from the sun to Earth and beyond, and this solved the decades-old mystery of whether they have any mass. (They do, though it’s very small.) Since neutrinos are among the most common particles in the universe, this is turn answered a lot of questions about what matter is.
While McDonald won the 2015 Nobel, his new award is called the 2016 Breakthrough Prize.
The prize was founded by a group of prominent figures from the technology world: Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Winners are selected by a committee of previous winners. This year’s pot was nearly $22 million.
The Breakthrough Prize is a major honour even aside from the money, but the big winners financially were five life science researchers and one mathematician. They all won as individuals, not teams, and while the physics teams divide $3 million five ways, the life science and math winners take home $3 million each.
Tom Spears, Ottawa CitizenMore from Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: November 9, 2015 | Last Updated: November 9, 2015 9:22 AM EST
Professor Arthur B. McDonald of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Julie Oliver / Ottawa Citizen
One month after winning the Nobel prize in physics, Art McDonald of Queen’s University has won a share of the U.S. $3-million Breakthrough Prize in physics.
Announced Sunday night at a private ceremony in Berkeley, California, the Breakthrough Prizes in physics, mathematics and life sciences will be celebrated Monday. There’s a day-long event of science symposia and awards ceremonies.
McDonald insisted after the Nobel win that he won through the combined effort of a large team, and the new award recognizes this. The physics award goes to five teams that all worked on tiny particles called neutrinos, and the award’s $3-million prize is to be shared by all 1,300 members of the five teams. If it’s divided equally, it comes to $2,307 each, or a little more than $3,000 in Canadian dollars.
The other physics winners are teams from Daya Bay in China, and three from Japan: KamLAND, K2K / T2K, and Super-Kamiokande.
McDonald’s team, some of them from Carleton University, founded the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in an active nickel mine two kilometres deep in Sudbury. Its first role — the one that won the Nobel — was to detect and understand neutrinos coming from the sun. Neutrinos interact so little with other matter that they are very hard to detect.
The Sudbury team was able to determine that neutrinos change their type as they travel from the sun to Earth and beyond, and this solved the decades-old mystery of whether they have any mass. (They do, though it’s very small.) Since neutrinos are among the most common particles in the universe, this is turn answered a lot of questions about what matter is.
While McDonald won the 2015 Nobel, his new award is called the 2016 Breakthrough Prize.
The prize was founded by a group of prominent figures from the technology world: Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Winners are selected by a committee of previous winners. This year’s pot was nearly $22 million.
The Breakthrough Prize is a major honour even aside from the money, but the big winners financially were five life science researchers and one mathematician. They all won as individuals, not teams, and while the physics teams divide $3 million five ways, the life science and math winners take home $3 million each.
