Hideki Yukawa
Japanese physicist (1907–1981)
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Through Kyoto, Spectroscopy and Proton
Early life and education
Hideki Ogawa was born on 23 January 1907 in Tokyo, Japan, the third son of Takuji Ogawa, and grew up in Kyoto, where his father became Professor of Geology at Kyoto Imperial University. 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. He decided against a career in experimental physics in college when he demonstrated clumsiness in glassblowing, a requirement for experiments in spectroscopy.
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 1933, he became Lecturer and Assistant Professor of Physics at Osaka Imperial University.
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Career and research
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.
In 1938, Yukawa received his Ph.D. from Osaka Imperial University for his predictions regarding the existence of mesons and his theoretical work on the nature of nuclear forces. 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. In 1948, he became a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, and at Columbia University the following year.
In 1949, Yukawa 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.
In 1946, Yukawa founded the journal Progress of Theoretical Physics, and published the books Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946) and Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948).
In 1953, Yukawa became the first Director of the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics (now the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics), a position he held until his retirement in 1970.
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; subsequently, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
Personal life and death
In 1932, he married Sumi Yukawa (スミ). In accordance with Japanese customs (see Mukoyōshi), 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. The couple had two sons, Takaaki and Harumi. Takaaki Yukawa (1934–1971) also became a theoretical physicist, earning a Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin in 1965 under John Lighton Synge.
Owing to increasing infirmity, in his final years Yukawa 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.