Plenary Lectures and VIP Guests

Art McDonald

Short Bio:

Dr. Arthur B. McDonald is a world-renowned Canadian astrophysicist and Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, best known for his groundbreaking work in particle physics. Born in Nova Scotia, he completed his education at Dalhousie University and the California Institute of Technology before gaining extensive research experience at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories and Princeton University. His career culminated in his role as the Director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, where he led a monumental underground experiment that successfully solved the decades-old solar neutrino problem. By proving that subatomic particles called neutrinos change identities as they travel from the Sun to the Earth, his team conclusively demonstrated that these particles possess mass, which forced a major revision to the Standard Model of particle physics.

For this monumental discovery, Dr. McDonald was jointly awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita. Beyond the Nobel Prize, his immense contributions to science have earned him numerous prestigious honors, including being named a Companion of the Order of Canada and co-receiving the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Although retired from formal teaching, he remains an active and influential figure in the scientific community, continuously collaborating on advanced neutrino and dark matter research projects at SNOLAB to further unlock the mysteries of the universe.