Hideki Yukawa

Hideki Yukawa 湯川 秀樹
Born	January 23, 1907(1907-01-23) Tokyo, Japan
Died	September 8, 1981 (aged 74) Tokyo, Japan
Nationality	Japan
Fields	Theoretical Physics
Institutions	Kyoto University Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics Columbia University
Alma mater	Kyoto Imperial University
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1949)

Hideki Yukawa FRSE (湯川 秀樹, Yukawa Hideki^?, January 23, 1907 – September 8, 1981), née Ogawa (小川, Ogawa^?), was a Japanese theoretical physicist and the first Japanese Nobel laureate.

Biography

Yukawa was born in Tokyo, Japan. In 1929, after receiving his degree from Kyoto Imperial University he stayed on as a lecturer for four years. After graduation, he was interested in theoretical physics, particularly in the theory of elementary particles. In 1932, he married Sumi (スミ, Sumi^?) and had two sons, Harumi and Takaaki. In 1933 he became an assistant professor at Osaka University, at age 26.

In 1935 he published his theory of mesons, which explained the interaction between protons and neutrons, and was a major influence on research into elementary particles. In 1940 he became a professor in Kyoto University. In 1940 he won the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy, in 1943 the Decoration of Cultural Merit from the Japanese government. In 1949 he became a professor at Columbia University, the same year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, after the discovery by Cecil Powell of Yukawa's predicted pion in 1947. Yukawa also predicted K-capture, in which a low energy hydrogen electron could be absorbed by the nucleus.

Yukawa became the first chairman at Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics 1953. He received a Doctor, honoris causa from the University of Paris, and honorary memberships of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the International Academy of Philosophy and Sciences, and the Pontificia Academia Scientiarum.

He was an editor of Progress of Theoretical Physics,^[1] and published the papers Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946) and Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948).

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

Family

Solo violinist Diana Yukawa (ダイアナ湯川) is a relative of Hideki Yukawa.

See also

• Yukawa potential, an approximation for the binding force in an atomic nucleus

References

• 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 = The traveler / Hideki Yukawa ; translated by L. Brown & R. Yoshida(1982)

External links

• Hideki Yukawa - Biography
• About Hideki Yukawa
• his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces.