Clyde Cowan, American Physicist

Clyde Lorrain Cowan Jr. (December 6, 1919 - May 24, 1974) was an American physicist. He was a captain in the US Army Air Forces, where he earned a bronze star in WWII. Benefitting from the G.I. Bill, he attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, receiving a Masters Degree, and a Ph.D. in 1949. He then joined the staff of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory where he met Frederick Reines. In 1951 Reines and Cowan began their search for the neutrino. The Cowan-Reines neutrino experiment confirmed the existence of the antineutrino - a neutrally charged subatomic particle with very low mass. After months of data collection, they had accumulated data on about three neutrinos per hour in their detector. To be absolutely sure that they were seeing neutrino events from the detection scheme described above, they shut down the reactor to show that there was a difference in the number of detected events. He began his teaching career in 1957 as a Professor of Physics at George Washington University. The following year he left GWU and joined the faculty of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. a post he held until the end of his life. He died in 1974 at the age of 54. Frederick Reines received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 in both their names. No photographer credited, undated

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Clyde Cowan Detecting Lorrain Neutrino Particle Poltergeist Subatomic

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