Clyde Cowan

Clyde Lorrain Cowan Jr. (6 December 1919 to 24 May 1974) was an American physicist and the co-discoverer of the neutrino, with Frederick Reines. Their discovery was made in 1956 in the neutrino experiment, and Reines later received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics. Cowan was born in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated in 1940 with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy in Rolla, where he edited the student newspaper. During the Second World War he served as a captain in the United States Army Air Forces and earned a bronze star. With help from the G.I. Bill he attended Washington University in St. Louis, took a master's degree and a Ph.D. in 1949, and then joined the staff of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico, where he met Reines. He began teaching in 1957 as a professor of physics at George Washington University and in 1958 joined the faculty of The Catholic University of America, a post he held until the end of his life.