Aiken County · Marker 02-44
The Detection of the Neutrino, 1956
Savannah River Site, Aiken vicinity
Front inscription
On August 27, 1956, at the Savannah River Plant (now Savannah River Site), Drs. Clyde L. Cowan, Jr. (1919-1974) and Frederick Reines (1918-1999) used P Reactor to detect the neutrino, a sub-atomic particle hypothesized in 1930 but unconfirmed until their experiment, one of the most significant in modern physics.
The Nobel Prize in Physics, 1995
In 1995 Dr. Frederick Reines was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his and Dr. Clyde L. Cowan’s detection of the neutrino at the Savannah River Plant. The Nobel citation called their experiment “a pioneering contribution that opened the doors to the region of ‘impossible’ neutrino experiments.”