Davis, Raymond, Jr., 1914–2006, American astrochemist, Ph.D. Yale Univ. 1942. Davis, who served in the Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1946, was a researcher at Monsanto Chemical Company (1946–48) and Brookhaven National Laboratory (1948–84). In 1984 he was named a research professor at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, a position he held until his death in 2006. Davis received the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics with Riccardo Giacconi and Masatoshi Koshiba for pioneering contributions to astrophysics. Davis and Koshiba are credited with detecting cosmic neutrinos, the most elusive particles in the universe. Their work led to a new field of research known as neutrino astronomy, which is of importance to particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology.
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