Los Alamos Historical Society
Reines Trust Leaves $100,000 to Historical Society
The Los Alamos Historical Society has received a bequest of $100,000 from the Sylvia and Frederick Reines Trust, the largest single gift ever received by the organization. In addition, the Society will be the repository for the display Nobel Prize medal for physics that Fred was awarded in 1995.
Robert Reines, son of Sylvia and Fred, listens along with his wife, Anne, and daughter Jessie, during a reception honoring Sylvia and Fred Reines in Fuller Lodge on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2007. |
The trust specifies the use of the bequest to support a curator staff position, for the preservation and repair of additions to the collection, and for the purchase and/or construction of a new facility to house the artifacts.
“ This substantial gift will go far in enabling the Historical Society to fulfill its mission to the community of Los Alamos and, more widely, to the community of scholars,” said Laurence Campbell, president of the Los Alamos Historical Society. “Moreover, this gift of the Sylvia and Frederick Reines Trust is an opportunity to commemorate a great scientist of Los Alamos and the achievements that are associated with his tenure here.” |
Sylvia and Fred Reines first came to Los Alamos in 1944 as part of the Manhattan Project. Fred worked in the Theoretical Division under Richard Feynman and later became Group Leader. He served as the director of Operation Greenhouse, which consisted of a number of historically significant Atomic Energy Commission experiments on Eniwetok Atoll, and worked on the results of bomb tests at Eniwetok, Bikini and the Nevada Test Site.
The couple was very involved in the community during their time in Los Alamos. Sylvia was an early member and president of Hadassah , the Jewish women’s service and educational organization. Fred was active with the Los Alamos Little Theater. His dramatic roles included the lead role in "Inherit the Wind" and performances of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in Los Alamos.
Son Robert was born in Los Alamos May 1945 and daughter Alisa (Lisa) followed in 1948.
In 1956, Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan worked with reactors in Hanford, WA, and Savannah River, SC, to detect the neutrino. Reines was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics for the work. |
Sylvia and Fred Reines at what is now the Anderson Overlook on the Main Hill Road. |
Reines’ Nobel Prize remains the sole award received for work conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the only one for work in New Mexico. The Historical Society is working with Los Alamos National Bank to display the Nobel Medal for the entire community to share.
The Reines children and friends of the couple have noted that Sylvia was a driving force behind Fred’s success.
“It was a team effort,” Robert Reines, of Ojo Sarco, NM, said of Fred’s Nobel Prize, noting that both of his parents had very high intellectual standards and that his father could not have accomplished all he did without Sylvia’s support.
Those sentiments were echoed by Lisa, who now resides in Trumansville, NY. “When he received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1995, she was told by someone in Stockholm involved in organizing the grand affair that her husband ‘couldn’t have done this without you.’ My parents were a team, and my mother’s instincts about people and situations were crucial to my father’s success.”
Fred Reines passed away in 1998. Sylvia died in October 2006. Click on these links to read biographies of Fred and Sylvia.
Both Robert and Lisa said the work of the Los Alamos Historical Society was important to Sylvia Reines throughout her life. She was a long-time supporter who maintained a collection of all of the Society’s publications and wanted to ensure history of the community is preserved.
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