Michael K. Moe (born 17 November 1937 in

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

) is an American experimental physicist, specializing in particle physics and nuclear physics. He is known his role in 1987 in the direct detection of two neutrino

double beta decay In nuclear physics, double beta decay is a type of radioactive decay in which two neutrons are simultaneously transformed into two protons, or vice versa, inside an atomic nucleus. As in single beta decay, this process allows the atom to move cl ...

in ⁸²Se. (Indirect detection of two neutrino double beta decay had been done in the 1960s.)

Education and career

Moe received in 1959 his bachelor's degree from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and in 1965 his Ph.D. under

Frederick Reines Frederick Reines ( ; March 16, 1918 – August 26, 1998) was an American physicist. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physics for his co-detection of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in the neutrino experiment. He may be the only scientist in ...

from

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University and the Case Institute of Technology. Case ...

. Moe became at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

in 1966 an assistant research physicist, in 1968 an assistant professor, in 1973 a research physicist, and retiring in 1997. He was also involved in the search for the extremely rare (and perhaps nonexistent) neutrino-less double beta decay, for which he published a proposal in 1991; in the 2000s he participated in the search for such decay pursued by

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored ...

's Enriched Xenon Observatory (EXO). In 2013 Moe received the Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moe, Michael K. 1937 births Living people Scientists from Milwaukee 21st-century American physicists American nuclear physicists American particle physicists Stanford University alumni Case Western Reserve University alumni University of California, Irvine faculty