Hideki Yukawa

Quantum field theory
Feynman diagram
History
Background Field theory Electromagnetism Weak force Strong force Quantum mechanics Special relativity General relativity Gauge theory Yang–Mills theory
Symmetries Symmetry in quantum mechanics C-symmetry P-symmetry T-symmetry Lorentz symmetry Poincaré symmetry Gauge symmetry Explicit symmetry breaking Spontaneous symmetry breaking Noether charge Topological charge
Tools Anomaly Background field method BRST quantization Correlation function Crossing Effective action Effective field theory Expectation value Feynman diagram Lattice field theory LSZ reduction formula Partition function Propagator Quantization Regularization Renormalization Vacuum state Wick's theorem
Equations Dirac equation Klein–Gordon equation Proca equations Wheeler–DeWitt equation Bargmann–Wigner equations
Standard Model Quantum electrodynamics Electroweak interaction Quantum chromodynamics Higgs mechanism
Incomplete theories String theory Supersymmetry Technicolor Theory of everything Quantum gravity
Scientists Adler Anderson Anselm Bargmann Becchi Belavin Bell Berezin Bethe Bjorken Bleuer Bogoliubov Brodsky Brout Buchholz Cachazo Callan Coleman Dashen DeWitt Dirac Doplicher Dyson Englert Faddeev Fadin Fayet Fermi Feynman Fierz Fock Frampton Fritzsch Fröhlich Fredenhagen Furry Glashow Gelfand Gell-Mann Goldstone Gribov Gross Gupta Guralnik Haag Heisenberg Hepp Higgs Hagen 't Hooft Iliopoulos Ivanenko Jackiw Jona-Lasinio Jordan Jost Källén Kendall Kinoshita Klebanov Kontsevich Kuraev Landau Lee Lehmann Leutwyler Lipatov Łopuszański Low Lüders Maiani Majorana Maldacena Migdal Mills Møller Naimark Nambu Neveu Nishijima Oehme Oppenheimer Osterwalder Parisi Pauli Peskin Plefka Polyakov Pomeranchuk Popov Proca Rubakov Ruelle Salam Schrader Schwarz Schwinger Segal Seiberg Semenoff Shifman Shirkov Skyrme Sommerfield Stora Stueckelberg Sudarshan Symanzik Thirring Tomonaga Tyutin Vainshtein Veltman Virasoro Ward Weinberg Weisskopf Wentzel Wess Wetterich Weyl Wick Wightman Wigner Wilczek Wilson Witten Yang Yukawa Zamolodchikov Zamolodchikov Zee Zimmermann Zinn-Justin Zuber Zumino

Standard Model of particle physics
Elementary particles of the Standard Model
Background Particle physics Standard Model Quantum field theory Gauge theory Spontaneous symmetry breaking Higgs mechanism
Constituents Electroweak interaction Quantum chromodynamics CKM matrix Standard Model mathematics
Limitations Strong CP problem Hierarchy problem Neutrino oscillations Physics beyond the Standard Model
Scientists Rutherford Thomson Chadwick Bose Sudarshan Davis Jr Anderson Fermi Dirac Feynman Rubbia Gell-Mann Kendall Taylor Friedman Powell Anderson Glashow Iliopoulos Lederman Maiani Meer Cowan Nambu Chamberlain Cabibbo Schwartz Perl Majorana Weinberg Lee Ward Salam Kobayashi Maskawa Mills Yang Yukawa 't Hooft Veltman Gross Pais Pauli Politzer Reines Schwinger Wilczek Cronin Fitch Vleck Higgs Englert Brout Hagen Guralnik Kibble de Mayolo Lattes Zweig

He was born as Hideki Ogawa in Tokyo and grew up in Kyoto with two older brothers, two older sisters, and two younger brothers.[3] 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 in high school; his teacher marked his exam answer as incorrect when Ogawa proved a theorem but in a different manner than the teacher expected.[3] He decided against a career in experimental physics in college when he demonstrated clumsiness in glassblowing, a requirement for experiments in spectroscopy.[3]

In 1929, after receiving his bachelor's degree at 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 Yukawa (スミ). In accordance with Japanese customs of the time, 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.[3] The couple had two sons, Harumi and Takaaki. In 1933 he became a lecturer at Osaka Imperial University, at 26 years old.

In 1935 he 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.[4]

In 1938, he received his Ph.D degree at Osaka Imperial University for his predictions regarding the existence of mesons and his theoretical work on the nature of nuclear forces.[5][6] These research achievements were the reason he was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In 1940 he became a professor in Kyoto Imperial 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 Frank 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.[7]

Yukawa became the first chairman of Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1953. He received a Doctorate, honoris causa, from the University of Paris and honorary memberships in the Royal Society,[1] Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the International Academy of Philosophy and Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences,[4] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[7] the American Philosophical Society,[8] and the Pontificia Academia Scientiarum.

He was an editor of Progress of Theoretical Physics,[8] and published the books 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.

He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution;[9][10] subsequently, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.[11]

Yukawa retired from Kyoto University in 1970 as a Professor Emeritus. Owing to increasing infirmity, in his final years he appeared in public in a wheelchair. He died at his home in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, on 8 September 1981 from pneumonia and heart failure, aged 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.

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)[1]
• 1964 – Lomonosov Gold Medal
• 1967 – Pour le Mérite[12]
• 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.

• 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), ISBN 9971-950-10-3

• 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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hideki Yukawa.

• Hideki Yukawa on Nobelprize.org
• "Research Profile – Hideki Yukawa". Lindau Nobel Mediatheque. 23 January 1907. Retrieved 17 March 2022.
• Paper: On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I – paper for which Yukawa received the Nobel Prize
• About Hideki Yukawa
• The short film "Yukawa Story (1954)" is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.
• Works by or about Hideki Yukawa at Internet Archive