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Canadian physicist Art McDonald has won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics (see http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nobel-prize-physics-2015-1.3258178). He shared it with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita, for their contributions to experiments demonstrating that the elementary subatomic particles called neutrinos change identities.
U of L alumnus Dr. Nathaniel Tagg is now an Associate Professor of Physics at Otterbein College in Ohio. As a graduate student at the University of Guelph, Nat was an author on the Nobel Prize winning paper. (see http://physicsblog.otterbein.edu/?p=363).
Dr. Tagg got his start in research at the U of L working with Professor Emeritus Dr. David Siminovitch. He was a co-author on 2 research publications that came out of Siminovitch’s lab.
Professor Mark Walton recalls teaching Nat Tagg a 4th-year course in nuclear and particle physics. He also has a tenuous connection with the Nobel Prize winner, Art McDonald, who did a BSc (Honours) and MSc in Physics at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Walton also completed a BSc (Honours) in Physics at Dalhousie, and remembers the physics faculty there holding up the stellar academic record of Art McDonald as the gold standard. (Keep working, Mark!)
McDonald is the 4th Canadian to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. Other Canadian winners have direct connections with southern Alberta. Dr. Richard E. Taylor (1990 Nobel Prize in Physics) was born in Medicine Hat, while Dr. Bertram Brockhouse (1994 Nobel Prize in Physics) was born here in Lethbridge.
Contact:
Catherine Drenth | catherine.drenth@uleth.ca