THE DISCOVERY OF THE MUON NEUTRINO

DANBY, G. & J-M. GAILLARD & K. GOULIANOS & L. M. LEDERMAN & N. MISTRY & M. SCHWARTZ & J. STEINBERGER.

Obervation of High-Energy Neutrino Reactions and the Existence of Two Kinds of Neutrino.

(New York), American physical Society, 1962. Lex8vo. Volume 9, No. 1, July 1, 1962 of "Physical Review Letters", In the original printed blue wrappers. A very nice and clean copy externally as well as internally, near mint. Pp. 36-44. [Entire issue: (2), 46 pp].

First edition of this seminal paper in which the discovery of the muon neutrino was first announced. The muon neutrino is the second of the three neutrinos and it forms the second generation of leptons. Jack Steinberger, Leon Lederman and Melvin Schwartz were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 1988, "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino".

In 1934 Enrico Fermi had solved the major problem of beta decay: How do electrons come out of the nucleus if there are non to begin with? Pauli had named his proposed light particle a neutron. James Chadwick had named his much more massive nuclear particle a neutron as well which left the two particles with the same name. Fermi therefore, to solve the confusion, coined the term neutrino (Italian diminutive of neutron). Speculations in the early 1940ies were centered on whether it would be possible to find even smaller parts of an atom. "The experiment used a beam of the AGS's energetic protons to produce a shower of pi mesons, which traveled 70 feet toward a 5,000-ton steel wall made of old battleship plates. On the way, they decayed into muons and neutrinos, but only the latter particles could pass through the wall into a neon-filled detector called a spark chamber. There, the impact of neutrinos on aluminum plates produced muon spark trails that could be detected and photographed -- proving the existence of muon-neutrinos. The experiment's use of the first-ever neutrino beam paved the way for scientists to use these particles in research at the AGS and around the world."(Nobel Prize, Brookhaven National Laboratory)

"Following the discovery of a second neutrino associated with the muon - the Muon neutrino - at Brookhaven in 1962 by L. Lederman, M. Schwartz, J. Steinberger, and collaborators, a new neutrino program was started in CERN in 1963. Using a spark chamber set-up and a heavy liquid bubble chamber exposed to the new high quality neutrino beam the discovery was confirmed with high statistics". (Krige, John. History of CERN, 1996, p. 433).

Order-nr.: 43437