Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
McDonald, Arthur B.
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Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Dr. Arthur B. (Art) McDonald was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia on August 29, 1943. He attended Dalhousie University earning a Bachelor’s in Science (Physics) from Dalhousie in 1964, and a Master’s in Science (Physics) in 1965. He then went on the Caltech, where he earned a PhD in Physics in 1969. He went to work at a nuclear research laboratory, then to Princeton University to teach Physics from 1982-1989. He started teaching at Queen’s University in 1989. Art began to study whether neutrinos had mass, and in doing so started the SNOLAB in Sudbury, Ontario, in a mine 2km underground. The SNOLAB work led to the discovery that neutrinos from the sun change or oscillate, which proves they have a mass. This changed the standard model of physics. For his work, he and a Japanese scientist were co-winners of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. He hold an honorary degree from Dalhousie University (2007) and is a Companion of the Order of Canada.