Hideki Yukawa

Hideki Yukawa (Template:Langx; Template:Ne; 23 January 1907 – 8 September 1981) was a Japanese theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949 "for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces".

Biography

Hideki Ogawa was born on 23 January 1907 in Tokyo, Japan, and grew up in Kyoto with two older brothers, two older sisters, and two younger brothers.<ref name="Tabibito">Template:Cite book</ref> He read the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean, and later Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu. His father, for a time, considered sending him to technical college rather than university since he was "not as outstanding a student as his older brothers". However, when his father broached the idea with his middle school principal, the principal praised his "high potential" in mathematics and offered to adopt Ogawa himself in order to keep him on a scholarly career. At that, his father relented.

Ogawa decided against becoming a mathematician when his high school teacher marked his exam answer as incorrect when Ogawa proved a theorem but in a different manner than the teacher expected.<ref name="Tabibito"/> He decided against a career in experimental physics in college when he demonstrated clumsiness in glassblowing, a requirement for experiments in spectroscopy.<ref name="Tabibito"/>

In 1929, Ogawa graduated from Kyoto Imperial University, where he was a lecturer from 1932 to 1939. During this period, he was interested in theoretical physics, particularly in the theory of elementary particles.

In 1932, Ogawa married Template:Nihongo. In accordance with Japanese customs (see mukoyoshi), since he came from a family with many sons but his father-in-law Genyo had none, he was adopted by Genyo and changed his family name from Ogawa to Yukawa.<ref name="Tabibito"/> The couple had two sons, Harumi and Takaaki. In 1933, he became Lecturer and Assistant Professor of Physics at Osaka Imperial University.

In 1935, Yukawa published his theory of mesons, which explained the interaction between protons and neutrons at Osaka Imperial University, and was a major influence on research into elementary particles.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 1938, Yukawa received a doctorate from Osaka Imperial University for his predictions regarding the existence of mesons and his theoretical work on the nature of nuclear forces.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> These research achievements were the reason he was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In 1939, Yukawa was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at Kyoto Imperial University. The following year, he won the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy, and in 1943 the Decoration of Cultural Merit from the Japanese government. In 1949, he became a visiting professor at Columbia University, the same year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, after the discovery by Cecil Powell, Giuseppe Occhialini, and César Lattes of Yukawa's predicted pi meson in 1947. Yukawa also worked on the theory of K-capture, in which a low energy electron is absorbed by the nucleus, after its initial prediction by G. C. Wick.<ref name=":1">Segré, Emilio (1987) "K-Electron Capture by Nuclei", pp. 11–12, chapter 3 in Discovering Alvarez: selected works of Luis W. Alvarez, with commentary by his students and colleagues, Luis W. Alvarez and W. Peter Trower, University of Chicago Press. Template:ISBN.</ref>

In 1953, Yukawa became the first Director of the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics (now the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics). He received a Doctorate, honoris causa, from the University of Paris and honorary memberships in the Royal Society,<ref name="frs"/> Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the International Academy of Philosophy and SciencesTemplate:Citation needed, the United States National Academy of Sciences,<ref name=":0" /> the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,<ref name=":1" /> the American Philosophical Society,<ref name=":2" /> and the Pontificia Academia Scientiarum.

Yukawa was an editor of Progress of Theoretical Physics,<ref name=":2">Template:Cite book</ref> and published the books Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946) and Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948).

Activism

In 1955, Yukawa joined ten other leading scientists and intellectuals in signing the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, calling for nuclear disarmament.

Yukawa was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> subsequently, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Later life and death

Yukawa retired from Kyoto University in 1970 as professor emeritus. Owing to increasing infirmity, in his final years he appeared in public in a wheelchair. He died of pneumonia and heart failure on 8 September 1981 at his home in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, at the age of 74. His tomb is in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto.

Solo violinist Diana Yukawa (ダイアナ湯川) is a close relative of Hideki Yukawa.Template:Citation needed

Awards and honors

File:Hideki Yukawa with family 1949.jpg

Yukawa with family in 1949

• 1940 – Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy
• 1941 – Academic Noma Award
• 1943 – Order of Culture
• 1949 – Nobel Prize in Physics
• 1963 – Elected a Foreign Member Royal Society (ForMemRS)<ref name="frs"/>
• 1963 – Lomonosov Gold Medal
• 1967 – Pour le Mérite<ref name="ORDEN POUR LE MÉRITE">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1967 – Medal of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
• 1977 – Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun
• 1981 – Junior Second Rank (8 September; posthumous)

There is a street, Route Yukawa, named after Yukawa at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.

Bibliography

• Profiles of Japanese science and scientists, 1970 – supervisory editor: Hideki Yukawa (1970)
• Creativity and intuition: a physicist looks at East and West by Hideki Yukawa; translated by John Bester (1973)
• Scientific works (1979)
• Tabibito (旅人) – The Traveler by Hideki Yukawa; translated by L. Brown & R. Yoshida (1982), Template:ISBN

See also

• Yukawa potential, an approximation for the binding force in an atomic nucleus
• Yukawa interaction
• Progress of Theoretical Physics
• List of Japanese Nobel laureates
• List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Kyoto University
• 6913 Yukawa – an asteroid named after Hideki Yukawa

External links

• Template:Nobelprize
• Template:Cite web
• Paper: On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I – paper for which Yukawa received the Nobel Prize
• About Hideki Yukawa
• Template:Internet Archive short film
• Template:Internet Archive author