Nobel Prize Recipient. He was recognized as an American chemist who shared a fourth of the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physics with a Japanese physicist, Masatoshi Koshiba, who shared a fourth, and Italian-American, Riccardo Giacconi, who was awarded the remaining half. According to the Nobel Prize committee, he and Koshiba received the coveted award "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos." Giacconi made contributions to X-ray astronomy. After finishing local schools, he attended the University of Maryland, graduating in 1938 with a degree in chemistry. After working for the Dow Chemical Company in Michigan for a year, he returned to the University of Maryland to earn a Master's degree, before going on to Yale to earn a doctorate in 1942. During World War II, he entered the Army as a reserve officer and spent years at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, observing chemical weapons tests. Following the war, he worked for laboratories trying to find peaceful use for atomic energy and ending in 1948 with Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, where he stayed until retirement in 1984. In the 1960s he and his colleague, John Norris Bachall, collaborated on the Homestake experiment, which was the first experiment to detect neutrinos emitted from the Sun. He published his first paper on this research in 1964. Together, the two worked for more than thirty years to resolve the discrepancies in detected neutrino. Later, his research results were confirmed by Koshiba. In 2003, he, Bahcall, and Koshiba shared the Benjamin Franklin Medal for their research on this. In 1985 Davis took a post as a research professor with the University of Pennsylvania. His arduous experiments spanning 30 years deep in the mines of Ohio and South Dakota proved the existence of neutrinos, tiny, elusive particles produced by nuclear reactions on the sun. His project experiments provided the final, conclusive evidence that the sun is, indeed, powered by nuclear fusion. His persistence provided the inspiration for the continuing experiments of the extensive research project and resulted in the driving force that kept it alive and well for over 30 years. Besides the Nobel Prize and the Franklin Medal, he received a host of accolades including, the Comstock Prize from the National Academy of Science in 1978 and the Wolf Prize from Israel in 2000. He married, had five children, enjoy sailing and lived in the same house for fifty years. At the age of 88, he is one of the oldest Nobel Prize recipients; he died four years after the award