Leo James Rainwater

Rainwater, Leo James 

Born Dec. 9, 1917, in Council, Idaho. American physicist.

Rainwater received a B.S. degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1939. He did his graduate work at Columbia University, where he became an assistant in physics in 1939 and a professor in 1952. From 1951 to 1953 and from 1956 to 1961 he headed the cyclotron laboratory at Columbia (Nevis Laboratories). He was associated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1962 to 1965 and with the Argonne National Laboratory from 1969 to 1971. Rainwater’s principal works deal with nuclear physics, particularly the structure of the nucleus, and particle physics.

Rainwater received a Nobel Prize in 1975.