Bruno Pontecorvo and Neutrino Oscillations

Abstract

I discuss briefly in this review, dedicated to the centenary of the birth of the great neutrino physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, the following ideas he proposed: (i) the radiochemical method of neutrino detection; (ii) the μ - e universality of the weak interaction; (iii) the accelerator neutrino experiment which allowed to prove that muon and electron neutrinos are different particles (the Brookhaven experiment). I consider in some details Pontecorvo's pioneering idea of neutrino masses, mixing, and oscillations and the development of this idea by Pontecorvo, by Pontecorvo and Gribov, and by Pontecorvo and myself.