Nobel Lecture

Masatoshi Koshiba held his Nobel Lecture December 8, 2002, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University. He was presented by Professor Mats Jonson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

Summary: Raymond Davis' findings provided the impetus to study solar neutrinos using Kamiokande, an imaging water Cherenkov detector. Kamiokande not only confirmed Davis' findings that there is a deficit of solar neutrinos, but also it showed that the neutrinos it was detecting came from the direction of the sun. Kamiokande also detected a neutrino burst from the supernova, SN 1987A, confirming theories about the physics of supernova explosions. New powerful 50-cm photomultiplier tubes were developed for the 50,000-tonne Super-Kamiokande detector, and in 1998 this provided the first evidence for neutrino oscillations in atmospheric neutrinos.