Hideki Yukawa's Birthday
Next: January 23, 2027
The physicist who imagined the meson.
The story
Where it comes from
Hideki Yukawa was born in Tokyo on 23 January 1907, and this Story marks his birthday. He grew up in Kyoto and graduated from Kyoto University in 1929. In 1935, as a young lecturer at Osaka University, he published a paper proposing a new theory of the force that holds the atomic nucleus together, and predicted a new particle, the meson. When American physicists found a meson-like particle in cosmic rays in 1937, he developed the theory further. In 1949 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
How it's celebrated
There is no public observance, but his birthday is a fine day to remember that great ideas can start with a pencil and a question. Students can look up how a particle was predicted on paper years before anyone saw it, and anyone can send a card to a young person who loves science.
Did you know
- From 1946 he edited an English-language physics journal from Japan, Progress of Theoretical Physics.
- His office at Kyoto University was in Yukawa Hall, a building named after him, and the city of Kyoto made him an Honorary Citizen.
- Among his many honours abroad was honorary membership of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
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