Posted: Wed, Oct 9, 2002, 7:14 AM ET (1114 GMT)
Three physicists from the US and Japan have won the 2002 Nobel Prize for their work in x-ray and neutrino astronomy. One half of the award was given to American astrophysicist Riccardo Giacconi, president of the Associated Universities, Inc., in Washington, for pioneering the field of x-ray astronomy. Giacconi is widely regarded as the "father of x-ray astronomy" for his work building the first x-ray experiments to fly on spacecraft in the late 1950s, and pushing for a series of more advanced x-ray observatories leading up to the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The other half of the award will be shared between Raymond Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba for their pioneering work observing neutrinos. David built a neutrino observatory in an abandoned mine to measure neutrinos from the Sun, while Koshiba led a team that observed neutrinos from supernova 1987A, two observations that provided critical proof for models of fusion in stellar interiors and supernova explosions.
