Arthur McDonald, Sydney-born Nobel winner, says physics 'fun'

The Sydney, N.S.-born physicist who has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics summed up his research work as "fun" in an interview four years ago with CBC Cape Breton.

Arthur "Art" McDonald is professor emeritus at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. It was for his research into the tiny particle, the neutrino, that he has been awarded the Nobel. 

• Arthur McDonald, Nobel Prize winner: the man, neutrinos, why his work matters

• 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics: Canadian Arthur B. McDonald shares win with Japan's Takaaki Kajita

In an interview with CBC Cape Breton's Information Morning for its 2011 series, Leaders in their Fields, McDonald said studying the very small has provided huge amounts of information to science.

"Ironically, we use the smallest particles that we know — neutrinos and others — to understand the most vast reaches of the universe, its origins, how it evolved from the original Big Bang, in part, the formation of the elements," he said.

"We studied the sun with neutrinos and understood how the sun burns in its core; the source of energy on earth, of course, but also the source of a number of these elements as they are created in the nuclear reactions there. 

"And also, we study questions like the dark matter, the particles that make up, we think, on the order of 25 per cent of the universe. Whereas we as people made of ordinary matter and tables made of ordinary matter and so on, make up only about five per cent.

"So they're some of the broadest questions you can possibly address: how is your universe composed, and how did it get from its origin to what it's like today. And yet you do it with techniques that involve the study of the most microscopic particles. So, well, it's fun." 

McDonald was born in Sydney in 1943 and graduated from Sydney Academy before heading off to Dalhousie University to study physics. He is the university's first alumnus to win the Nobel.

He shares the prize with Japanese physicist Takaaji Kajita.