UCI’s Frederick Reines and the Neutrino : A Speck of Matter Produces Stellar Honor
UC Irvine’s Frederick Reines has been honored around the world for his scientific proof in 1956 of a mysterious particle known as the neutrino.
Even within the cerebral world of physics, he is a celebrity.
Thus, one might assume that Reines’ visit to the White House last month for yet another honor--to receive the National Medal for Science from President Reagan--was just one more routine ceremony for the distinguished physicist.
Not so.
In an interview Monday, Reines’ eyes gleamed as he talked about the prestigious award.
“It was an incredible experience,” he said. “Let’s face it, they (in the White House) have panache; they have style, let’s not kid ourselves. My granddaughter, who is 6 going on 35, said, ‘Grandpa’s very brave to walk in front of all these people here.’ ”
And was Reines nervous about being a key figure in a presidential ceremony?
The gleam still in his eye, Reines responded: “You forget that I was in college drama and enjoyed very much being an actor.”
A tall, robust man--he was once a college gymnast and a champion in an arm-wrestling sport called “cane spree”--Reines, 66, speaks with a sonorous, distinct voice. He came to UC Irvine in 1966 as founding dean of the campus school of physical sciences, and he has been a professor of physics there since 1974.
Despite the assertion that he “likes playing a ham,” Reines played down his landmark role in verifying the existence of neutrinos.
‘Little Neutral One’
A neutrino is a particle that travels at the speed of light, has little or no mass, and no positive or negative charge. (The name neutrino, which means “little neutral one” in Italian, was coined by famed physicist Enrico Fermi.)
A neutrino is smaller and distinct from the other atomic particles--protons, electrons and neutrons.
Reines, working with the late Clyde Cowan at Los Alamos (New Mexico) Scientific Laboratory in 1956, devised a way to prove the existence of the neutrino. Discover magazine in a 1981 article about neutrinos said of the Reines-Cowan feat, “In its day, it was considered the most difficult physics experiment ever performed.”
But Reines says modestly that his work built upon that of other physicists. Austrian theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli suggested the existence of such a particle in 1930. And Fermi, Reines added, “made a quantitative theory out of it (the existence of the neutrino).”
However, when it was pointed out that the neutrino was “just a hypothesis” until Reines and Cowan devised the way to prove its existence, Reines interjected: “When you say ‘just a hypothesis,’ you should remember that it (the theoretical work prior to the proof) was a brilliant solution to a problem. The solution that Pauli thought of was to say that the conservation of energy in momentum . . . that that held down into the atomic, nuclear realm.
“In effect, the detection of the free neutrino was extending some of our fundamental laws (of nature) into a different realm.”
But while he is modest about his co-discovery role, Reines says he’s not the humble type:
“I’m the most arrogant guy in the world. All physicists are arrogant, because what they want to do is to learn a new thing. They think they can find out something new that was never known before, and when they do, their lives are fulfilled.
“Now, when I say arrogant, I don’t mean arrogant in the sense of miserable, reprehensible creatures. Not at all! After all, I think all human beings are arrogant. They speak as though they understand about God. They speak as though they can learn and do; humans are terribly arrogant, but not in a negative, pejorative sense.”
What next, then, in his “benign arrogance,” would Reines like to discover about the mysterious neutrino?
“I would like to understand more about the characteristics of these particles,” he said. “It’s clear that they’re an important part of the construction of the universe, and ther’re many aspects of them that need to be studied.”
But what worth is there in the study of the invisible neutrino, a particle so elusive that it very rarely reacts with any other element in the universe?
Reines raised his head, his eyes wide. “What good is the neutrino, that is what you’re asking? Well . . . when Farraday was experimenting with currents and magnetic stones, the prime minister (of England) asked, ‘What good is this?’ and Farraday responded: ‘Some day you may be able to tax this.’
“Little did Farraday know at the time that the esoteric research, removed from any practicality, would some day be taxed (as electricity) . . . That research has changed all of man’s life.”
Reines added that the evolving knowledge about the neutrino similarly will add to man’s knowledge of his world, and benefit, in ways yet unimagined, future generations.
“I don’t say that the neutrino is going to be a practical thing,” he said. “But it has been a time-honored pattern that science leads, and then technology comes along, and then put together, these things make an enormous difference in how we live.”
