Pages in the development of neutrino physics

Abstract

This review is quite subjective in nature, is incomplete, and can certainly not be regarded as a chapter in the history of particle physics. It consists of a collection of several short sketches associated with neutrino physics. Two of them, concerning Pauli and Fermi, are among those which in recent years have been published fairly frequently by a number of physicists, including the present author, in connection with the recent fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the neutrino. The story concerning the work of Majorana on the Majorana fermions which follows has not been discussed in such detail previously, at any rate not in the pages of Soviet journals. Then follow some reminiscences of quite personal nature associated with the experimental and theoretical work of the author on the proposal and development of radiochemical methods for neutrino detection, among which is the chlorine-argon method, on the suggestion of the existence of neutrino oscillations and their use in neutrino astronomy of the sun, on the establishment of the concept of weak processes and important properties of muons, on the proposal of new type of investigations of the weak interaction, on experiments with high energy neutrinos . . . .In order to reduce to some extent the extremely subjective nature of the review, the author summarizes in Tables I-IV important events in the history of neutrino physics up to 1980, and also provides a list of the large installations for the study of neutrinos.