Key facts
- The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of neutrino oscillations.
- Neutrino oscillations demonstrate that neutrinos possess mass.
- Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald led the research groups that made the discovery.
- The discovery challenges the completeness of the Standard Model of particle physics.
- Neutrinos are among the most numerous particles in the cosmos.
- The research involved large detectors like Super-Kamiokande and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo and Arthur B. McDonald of Queen’s University for their pivotal contributions to experiments demonstrating that neutrinos change identities, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillations. This discovery, made around the turn of the millennium, proved that neutrinos have mass, a finding that has significant implications for our understanding of the fundamental constituents of the universe and challenges the completeness of the Standard Model of particle physics.