Hideki Yukawa

Hideki Yukawa was a Japanese theoretical physicist and the first Japanese Nobel laureate for his prediction of the pi meson, or pion. He was born in Tokyo in 1907, the third son of Takuji Ogawa, who later became a professor of geology at Kyoto University. He graduated from Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University) in 1929 and became a lecturer there. In 1933, he moved to Osaka Imperial University (now Osaka University) as an assistant professor. In 1935, he published a paper entitled "On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I." in which he proposed a new field theory of nuclear forces and predicted the existence of a particle that mediated the strong interaction between protons and neutrons. He called this particle a "meson". His prediction was confirmed by the discovery of one type of meson in cosmic rays in 1937 by American physicists. He devoted himself to the development of the meson theory, which was later extended to include other types of mesons and their interactions. He also worked on the general theory of elementary particles, the non-local field theory, and the unified field theory. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1949 for his meson theory. He was also honored with many other awards and memberships, such as the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy, the Decoration of Cultural Merit, the Lomonosov Gold Medal, the Foreign Associate of the American National Academy of Sciences, and the Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was the director of the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics at Kyoto University, which was named after him as the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics. He was also a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Columbia University, and other institutions. He died in Kyoto in 1981 from pneumonia and heart failure. He was buried in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto. He was married to Sumi Yukawa and had two sons, Harumi and Takaaki. He was also a relative of the solo violinist Diana Yukawa. He was a prolific writer and editor of many books and papers on theoretical physics, such as Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles, and Progress of Theoretical Physics. He was also interested in philosophy, religion, and culture, and wrote essays on these topics. He was a man of great intellect, creativity, and curiosity, who made significant contributions to the understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and force.