| Year | Milestone | Who? | Reference | Nobel | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1896 | Discovery of the radioactivity | Becquerel | Comptes-Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, 122 (1896) 420 (24 février 1896) & Comptes-Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, 122 (1896) 501 (2 mars 1896) | Nobel prize 1903 | First Olympic games in Athens |
| 1914 | First hints that the beta decay spectrum is continuous | Chadwick | Verhandlungen der deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft 16 (1914) 383 | First World war | |
| 1927 | Confirmation that the beta decay spectrum is continuous | Ellis and Wooster | Proc. Roy. Soc. A 117 (1927) 109 | Heisenberg : uncertainty principle Lindberg : flight New-York Paris |
|
| 1930 | Invention of a "new" particle as a "desperate remedy" | Pauli | Dear radioactive ladies and gentlemen | Nobel prize 1945 (for the exclusion principle) | |
| 1932 | Discovery of the neutron | Chadwick | Nature 129 (1932) 312 | Nobel prize 1935 | A. Huxley : Brave New World |
| 1933 | Fermi names "neutrino" the Pauli particle and builds the beta decay theory | Fermi | Ricerca Scientifica 4 (1933) 491 Nuovo Cimento 11 (1934) 1 Z. Phys. 88 (1934) 161 | Nobel prize 1938 (for contributions in nuclear physics) | Hitler : Chancellor of Germany |
| 1934 | "Neutrino is undetectable" | Bethe and Peierls | Nature 133 (1934) 532 | Mao Zedong : Long March | |
| 1935 | Double-beta disintegration : first computations | Goeppert-Mayer | Phys. Rev. 48 (1935) 512 | Nobel prize 1963 (for the Shell model) | |
| 1937 | Is neutrino its own antiparticle ? | Majorana | Nuovo Cimento 14 (1937) 171 | Guernica Munich Agreement |
|
| 1939 | Theory of solar fusion and energy production in stars | Bethe | Phys. Rev. 55 (1939) 434 | Nobel prize 1967 | Second World War |
| 1941 | Neutrinos are abundantly produced in supernova explosions | Gamow | Phys. Rev. 59 (1941) 539 | Pearl Harbour | |
| 1946 | Proposals to detect neutrinos | Pontecorvo | Report PD-205 of the National Research Council of Canada, Division of Atomic Energy, Chalk River, Ontario, Nov. 13, 1946 | Churchill : the Iron Curtain | |
| 1956 | First experimental evidence for the neutrino | Reines and Cowan | Science 124 (1956) 103, July 20, 1956 | Nobel Prize 1995 for Reines | Hungarian Uprising of 1956 |
| 1957 | Parity violation in beta-decay | Lee, Yang Wu | Phys. Rev. 104 (1956) 254 Phys. Rev. 105 (1957) 1671 | Sputnik satellite | |
| 1957 | Neutrinos are left-handed | Goldhaber, Grodzins, Sunyar | Phys. Rev. 106 (1957) 826 | ||
| 1957 | First idea of neutrino oscillation (between neutrino and antineutrino) | Pontecorvo | ZETF 34 (1957) 247 – Soviet Physics JETP 7 (1958) 172 | ||
| 1959 | Second neutrino family ? How to discover it ? | Pontecorvo, Schwartz | Soviet Physics JETP 37 (1960) 1236, translated from J. Exp. Theoret. Phys. 37 (1959) 1751 Phys. Rev. Lett. 4 (1960) 306 | ||
| 1960 | First concept of a very high energy neutrino detector | Markov | Proc. 10th Int. Conf. on High-Energy Physics, Rochester, 1960, p. 579 | Independence of many african countries | |
| 1962 | Proposal of the flavour mixing for the neutrinos | Maki, Nakagawa, Sakata | Progress of Theoretical Physics 28 (1962) 870 | Cuban Missile Crisis | |
| 1962 | Discovery of the muon-neutrino | Lederman, Schwartz, Steinberger | Phys. Rev. Lett. 9 (1962) 36 | Nobel prize 1988 | |
| 1964 | First prediction for solar neutrinos | Bahcall Davis | Phys. Rev. Lett. 12 (1964) 300 Phys. Rev. Lett. 12 (1964) 303 | ||
| 1965 | First atmospheric neutrinos in South Africa and India | Reines et al. Kolar Gold | Phys. Rev. Lett. 15 (1965) 429 Phys. Lett. 18 (1965) 196 | War in Viet-Nam | |
| 1967 | Flavour oscillation of neutrinos | Pontecorvo | ZETF 53 (1967) 1717 – Soviet Physics JETP 26 (1968) 984 | Six-Day War | |
| 1968 | First observation of solar neutrinos … and 1st deficit | Davis | Phys. Rev. Lett. 20 (1968) 1205 | Nobel prize 2002 | May 68 in France and elsewhere Martin Luther King and Bob Kennedy : murdered |
| 1973 | Discovery of leptonic and hadronic neutral currents | Gargamelle at CERN | Phys. Lett. B46 (1973) 121 Phys. Lett. B46 (1973) 138 | Watergate Yom Kippur War Pinochet's coup d'état |
|
| 1975 | Discovery of the tau lepton implying the tau-neutrino | Perl at SLAC | Phys. Rev. Lett. 35 (1975) 1489 Phys. Lett. B70 (1977) 487 | Nobel Prize 1995 for Perl | End of war in Viet-Nam |
| 1976 | Neutrino astronomy needs 1 km3 detectors | Dumand | Proc. 1976 DUMAND Summer Workshop, September 1976, Hawaii | ||
| 1979 | The see-saw mechanism | Yanagida Gell-Mann, Ramond, Slansky | Prog. of Theor. Phys. 64 (1980) 1103 Sanibel Symposium 1979 | Khomeyni in Iran | |
| 1985 | Discovery of the MSW effect | Mikheyev, Smirnov, Wolfenstein | Phys. Rev. D17 (1978) 2369 Sov. J. Nucl. Phys. 42 (1985) 913 (in russian) Nuovo Cimento C9 (1986) 17 | Mikhail Gorbachev : new Soviet leader | |
| 1986 | First observation of a possible atmospheric neutrino anomaly (a muon-neutrino deficit) | IMB Kamiokande | Phys. Rev. Lett. 57 (1986) 1986 J. Phys. Soc. Jap. 55 (1986) 3786 | ||
| 1987 | Observation of the neutrinos from the supernova SN1987A | Kamiokande IMB Baksan | Phys. Rev. Lett. 58 (1987) 1490 Phys. Rev. Lett. 58 (1987) 1494 Phys. Lett. B 205 (1988) 209 | Nobel prize 2002 for Koshiba | Gorbatchev : Perestroïka |
| 1989 | Observation of 8B solar neutrinos … and confirmation of the solar neutrino deficit | Kamiokande | Phys. Rev. Lett. 63 (1989) 16 | Fall of the Berlin Wall | |
| 1989 | There are only 3 neutrino families | LEP at CERN | Phys. Lett. 231 (1989) 519 Phys. Lett. 231 (1989) 530 Phys. Lett. 231 (1989) 539 | ||
| 1992 | Observation of the solar neutrinos from the primary pp fusion reaction … and confirmation of the solar neutrino deficit | GALLEX then SAGE | Phys. Lett. B285 (1992) 376 Phys. Lett. B328 (1994) 234 | Yugoslavia begins to break up in several countries | |
| 1998 | The atmospheric neutrino anomaly : an oscillation between muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos | SuperKamiokande | Phys. Rev. Lett. 81 (1998) 1562 | Nobel prize 2015 for Kajita | |
| 2001 | Observation of tau neutrino interactions | Donut | Phys. Lett. B 504 (2001) 218 | ||
| 2001 | Solar neutrino deficit explained by oscillation mechanism and MSW effect | SNO experiment | Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 (2001) 071301 | Nobel prize 2015 for McDonald | September 11 : attacks at the World Trade Center |
| 2002 | Deficit of reactor neutrinos confirm solar neutrino oscillation | KamLAND | Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 (2003) 021802 | ||
| 2005 | First evidence for geoneutrinos | KamLAND | Nature 436 (2005) 499 | Kyoto protocol | |
| 2011 | T2K and Reactor neutrinos : determination of the 3rd mixing angle | T2K Double Chooz Daya Bay Reno | Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 (2011) 041801 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 (2012) 131801 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 (2012) 171803 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 (2012) 191802 | Civil war in Syria Tsunami in Japan, Fukushima |
|
| 2013 | Cosmological constraint on the sum of the neutrino masses | Planck experiment | Astronomy and Astrophysics 571 (2014) A16 | ||
| 2013 | First Observation of High-Energy Astrophysical Neutrinos | IceCube | Phys. Rev. Lett. 111 (2013) 021103 | ||
| 2014 | Solar neutrinos : direct observation of pp component ; full spectroscopy | Borexino | Nature 512 (2014) 383 | ||
| 2017 | First observation of coherent neutrino scattering | COHERENT Collaboration | Science 357 (2017) 1123 | ||
| 2018 | Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high energy neutrino | IceCube Fermi-LAT MAGIC | Science 361 (2018) 1378 | ||
| 2020 | Neutrinos from the CNO cycle | Borexino | Nature 587, 577-582 (2020) | Covid-19 |
During the conference on the History of the Neutrino (Sept. 5-7, 2018 in Paris) the historical context of all these discoveries was covered in three talks by Quentin Rodriguez (Clermont-Ferrand, France). His written contributions can be found as well as the videos of the talks : First Historic context (slides, video), Second Historic context (slides, video), Third Historic context (slides, video) and his written contribution to the Proceedings.