Rainwater, (Leo) James 1917-86
US physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Council, Idaho, he was educated at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and at Columbia University. During World War II he contributed to the Manhattan atomic bomb project. He became Professor of Physics at Columbia University in 1952 and was director of the Nevis Cyclotron Laboratory there from 1951 to 1953 and 1956 to 1961. At the time, there were two theories to describe the atomic nucleus. In one, the nuclear particles were arranged in concentric shells, in the other, the nucleus was described as analogous to a liquid drop. Rainwater produced a collective model combining the two ideas. Together with Aage Bohr and Ben Roy Mottelson, he developed this theory and obtained experimental evidence in its support. The three shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1975 for this work. Rainwater also worked with Val Fitch on studies of muonic X-rays, and developed an improved theory of high-energy particles scattering.