Rainwater, James definition of Rainwater, James in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Rainwater, James, 1917–86, American physicist, Ph.D. Columbia, 1946. After working on the Manhattan Project Manhattan Project, the wartime effort to design and build the first nuclear weapons ( atomic bombs ). With the discovery of fission in 1939, it became clear to scientists that certain radioactive materials could be used to make a bomb of unprecented power. U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. as a student during World War II, he became a professor of physics at Columbia in 1952. His theory that not all atomic nuclei are spherical was verified experimentally by Danish physicists Aage N. Bohr Bohr, Aage Niels (ägə nēls bōr), 1922–, Danish physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Copenhagen, 1954.
..... Click the link for more information. and Benjamin R. Mottelson Mottelson, Benjamin Roy, 1926–, Danish physicist, b. Chicago, Ph.D. Harvard, 1950. Raised and educated in the United States, he moved to Denmark, where he began work as a nuclear physicist.
..... Click the link for more information. . For their work the three researchers shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics. Rainwater also received the Atomic Energy Commission's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Prize for Physics in 1963.

Rainwater, (Leo) James (1917–86) physicist; born in Council, Ida. He taught at Columbia University (1939–42), worked on the Manhattan Project (1942–46), then returned to Columbia (1946–86). With Aage Bohr and B. R. Mottelson, he produced a nuclear model unifying the two prevailing theories of nuclear structure. The three shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in physics for this work.