Clyde Cowan | |
|---|---|
 Frederick Reines (left) with Cowan | |
| Born | (1919-12-06)December 6, 1919 Detroit, Michigan, United States |
| Died | May 24, 1974(1974-05-24) (aged 54) Bethesda, Maryland, United States |
| Alma mater | Washington University in St. Louis Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1957)[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | The Catholic University of America |
Clyde Lorrain Cowan Jr (December 6, 1919 – May 24, 1974) was an American physicist and the co-discoverer of theneutrino along withFrederick Reines. The discovery was made in 1956 in theneutrino experiment.[2] Reines received theNobel Prize in Physics in 1995.
Born the oldest of four children inDetroit, Michigan, Cowan's family moved toSt. Louis,Missouri, where he began his education attendingpublic schools. While attending theMissouri School of Mines and Metallurgy inRolla, Missouri, Cowan was Editor-in-Chief of the Missouri Miner newspaper from 1939–1940, and graduated in 1940 with aBS inchemical engineering.[3]
Cowan was acaptain in theUnited States Army Air Forces, where he earned abronze star inWorld War II.[4]
From 1936–1940 he was in theReserve Officers' Training Corps. Cowan joined the U.S. ArmyChemical Warfare Service with the rank ofSecond Lieutenant whenAmerica joined World War II in 1941. In August 1942, he was transferred toEighth Air Force stationed inLondon,England. In 1943 he designed and built an experimental cleaning unit to be used in case of gas attack. In the following year, he joined the staff of the British Branch of theMIT Radiation Laboratory, which was located inGreat Malvern, England. In 1945 he was a liaison officer with theRoyal Air Force, working to expedite transmittal of technical information and equipment. He returned to the United States in 1945, and worked atWright Patterson Air Force Base inDayton, Ohio. He leftactive duty in 1946.[4]
Benefitting from theG.I. Bill, Cowan attendedWashington University in St. Louis, Missouri, receiving amaster's degree, and aPhD in 1949. He then joined the staff of theLos Alamos Scientific Laboratory inNew Mexico, where he met Frederick Reines.
In 1951 Reines and Cowan began theCowan–Reines neutrino experiment, in hopes of discovering the neutrino. Because the neutrino was hypothetically created through beta decay, the two men made use of theSavannah River Plant inAiken,South Carolina, as their source of potential neutrinos. The pair, and their collaborators, collected data for months, and in 1956, concluded that they had certainly observed the neutrino, publishing their work in the July 20, 1956 issue ofScience.[5] Reines was later awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in this experiment. He alone received the award, because Cowan died in 1974, and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.[6]
Cowan began his teaching career in 1957 as aProfessor ofPhysics atGeorge Washington University inWashington, D.C. The following year he left GWU and joined the faculty ofThe Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., a post he held until the end of his life. He also acted at various times as a consultant to theU.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC),US Naval Ordnance Laboratory, theUnited States Naval Academy, theUnited States Army,United Mine Workers of America,Electric Boat Co., and theSmithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Cowan died inBethesda, Maryland of a sudden heart attack on May 24, 1974,[7] and was buried inArlington National Cemetery.
Cowan was married inWoodford, England, January 29, 1943 to Betty Eleanor, daughter of George Henry and Mabel Jane (Mather) Dunham ofWanstead, England. Seven of their children died in infancy. They had three surviving children. Cowan adopted two sons.
His grandson,James R. Riordon [d], a science journalist[8] and a former physicist and engineer who heads theAmerican Physical Society media relations office, initially conceived of thedistributed computing projectEinstein@home, which searchesgravitational wave data for signals from massive rotating objects such aspulsars.[citation needed]
Cowan was a direct descendant ofL. L. Langstroth, the "Father of Modern Beekeeping".[9]
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