Julius Wess Award 2013

Update Oct 6, 2015:
"The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 was awarded jointly to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass." Congratulations fom KCETA!

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The Julius Wess Award 2013 was dedicated to Takaaki Kajita (ICRR Tokyo) for his outstanding contributions to neutrino physics and especially for his discovery of the neutrino oscillations at the Super-Kamiokande detector. Takaaki Kajita has been studying neutrinos at the Kamiokande and later at the Super-Kamiokande experiment for more than 25 years. In 1988 he and his colleagues observed a deficit in atmospheric muon-neutrinos, which could later be explained by the occurrence of neutrino oscillations. Since 1996 he has been leading the studies of atmospheric neutrinos. The discovery of the neutrino oscillations had a groundbreaking impact on the understanding of neutrinos, which until then had been assumed to be massless. The oscillations were the first hint, that neutrinos have mass, even though it is very small.

The dedication of the Award took place on December 19, 2013. Christian Spiering (DESY) gave a talk on the latest results of the IceCube South Pole Neutrino Observatory. The laudatio was given by Prof. Ulrich Nierste (KIT). The awardee gave an impressive talk about the development of the Kamiokande detectors and the fascinating story of the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which started by accident and where endurance and patience leaded to success.

Lecture of Takaaki Kajita: Atmospheric Neutrino Oscillations (pdf, 7 MB)