Provincial honours

Provincial honours

Nobel Laureate Art McDonald receives Order of Ontario, recognized by Ontario Legislature.

By Chris Moffatt Armes

June 9, 2016

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Queen’s University professor emeritus and Nobel Laureate Arthur McDonald was formally presented with the Order of Ontario in a private ceremony Thursday.

Dr. McDonald, the co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics, met with the Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, while visiting Queen’s Park.

“I am honoured to receive the Order of Ontario for the work that I and our international team did at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO),” says Dr. McDonald. “The Province of Ontario has been a substantial supporter of our work and Ontario universities have been major participants. The people of Ontario have welcomed our international collaboration throughout our work on the SNO experiment and continue to do so for our ongoing experiments at the SNOLAB international underground facility.”

Earlier in the day, Dr. McDonald received a standing ovation during the Introduction of Visitors in the Ontario Legislative Assembly, in recognition his Nobel Prize-winning research. Dr. McDonald visited Queen’s Park, along with members of the SNO collaboration, as guests of the Minister of Research and Innovation and Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, Reza Moridi.

Dr. McDonald said that being recognized by the legislature was an honour for him and his SNO collaboration colleagues, given the level of support they received from the province.

“It is an honour for the SNO Collaboration and myself to be recognized in this way,” says Dr. McDonald. “We hope that our success will lead to greater international recognition of Canada and Ontario as locations where world-class research can be accomplished and will also inspire young Canadians to follow careers in science and technology.”

“The Nobel and Breakthrough Prize-winning research conducted by Dr. McDonald and his team at SNO have forever changed the world of particle physics and the way we view the universe,” says Daniel Woolf, Queen’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor. “The Queen’s University community is proud to continue supporting their ground-breaking research and we are thrilled to see the Government of Ontario recognize their accomplishments today.”

Dr. McDonald was named the co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) collaboration. Working two kilometers below the surface in Sudbury, Ontario, the SNO collaboration demonstrated that neutrinos change their type – or flavour – on their way to Earth from the sun, which indicates that they have non-zero mass.

 

Arts and Science