Cowan-Reines Neutrino Experiment, 1953
Cowan far light, and Reines, far right with Poltergeist team, 1955. Other members not identified. The Cowan-Reines neutrino experiment was performed by Clyde Lorrain Cowan Jr (December 6, 1919 - May 24, 1974) and Frederick Reines (March 16, 1918 - August 26, 1998) American physicists in 1956. This experiment confirmed the existence of the antineutrino - a neutrally charged subatomic particle with very low mass. They performed the experiment preliminarily at Hanford Site, but later moved the experiment to the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina near Aiken where they had better shielding against cosmic rays. This shielded location was 36 feet from the reactor and 39 feet underground. 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. Reines was honored with the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on neutrino physics
