Neutrino Physics: Past, Present, and Future

David Wark (RAL / Imperial College London)
Seminar room 3, 3.00 pm

Despite being only the third "fundamental" particle predicted to exist (after the electron and the proton), we know less about neutrinos than about any of the others we have seen. That is because neutrinos interact only weakly with other matter, making experiments extremely difficult. Only now, ~60 years since the first successful experimental observation of neutrinos, are we beginning to get a more complete description of their properties. What we have learned up to now has been full of surprises, and we have good reason to believe that more are yet to come. The talk will describe a bit of the history and then describe the current experimental situation, before giving a quick survey of upcoming experiments and what we hope they will tell us.