Toshihide Maskawa

益川 敏英 Toshihide Maskawa
Maskawa in 2008
Born	(1940-02-07) February 7, 1940 Nagoya, Japan
Nationality	Japan
Alma mater	Nagoya University
Known for	Work on CP violation CKM matrix
Awards	Sakurai Prize (1985) Japan Academy Prize (1985) Asahi Prize (1994) Nobel Prize in Physics (2008)
Scientific career
Fields	High energy physics (theory)
Institutions	Nagoya University Kyoto University Kyoto Sangyo University
Doctoral advisor	Shoichi Sakata

Toshihide Maskawa (or Masukawa) (益川 敏英, Masukawa Toshihide, born February 7, 1940 in Nagoya, Japan) is a Japanese theoretical physicist known for his work on CP-violation who was awarded one quarter of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."

Early life and education

After World War II ended, Maskawa family operated the sugar wholesaler. A native of Aichi Prefecture, Toshihide Maskawa graduated from Nagoya University in 1962 and received a Ph.D. degree in particle physics from the same university in 1967, his doctoral advisor was the famous physicist Shoichi Sakata.

From early life Maskawa like trivia, also studied mathematics, chemistry, linguistics and various books, but he hate novels.

Career

At Kyoto University in the early 1970s, he collaborated with Makoto Kobayashi on explaining broken symmetry (the CP violation) within the Standard Model of particle physics. Maskawa and Kobayashi's theory required that there be at least three generations of quarks, a prediction that was confirmed experimentally four years later by the discovery of the bottom quark.

Maskawa and Kobayashi's 1973 article, "CP Violation in the Renormalizable Theory of Weak Interaction", is the fourth most cited high energy physics paper of all time as of 2010. The Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix, which defines the mixing parameters between quarks was the result of this work. Kobayashi and Maskawa were jointly awarded half of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, with the other half going to Yoichiro Nambu.

Maskawa was Director of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics from 1997 to 2003. He is now special professor and director general of Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe at Nagoya University[1], director of Maskawa Institute for Science and Culture at Kyoto Sangyo University[2] and professor emeritus of Kyoto University .

Nobel lecture in Japanese

On 8 December 2008, after Maskawa telling the audience "Sorry, I cannot speak English", he delivered his Nobel lecture on “What Did CP Violation Tell Us?” in Japanese, at Stockholm University. Fortunately, the audience followed the subtitles on the screen behind him.

In fact, he can understand English, but he can only "read" English, on this ground, he never been trip abroad until the 2008 Nobel ceremonies.

Recognition

Paul Krugman, Roger Tsien, Martin Chalfie, Osamu Shimomura, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Masukawa, Nobel Prize Laureates 2008, at a press conference at the Swedish Academy of Science in Stockholm.

• 1979 – Nishina Memorial Prize
• 1985 – Sakurai Prize
• 1985 – Japan Academy Prize
• 1995 – Asahi Prize
• 1995 – Chu-Nichi Culture Prize
• 2007 – High Energy and Particle Physics Prize by European Physical Society
• 2008 – Nobel Prize in Physics
• 2008 – Order of Culture
• 2010 – Member of Japan Academy

Political proposition

In 2013, Maskawa and chemistry Nobel laureate Hideki Shirakawa issued a statement against the Japanese State Secrecy Law." The following is Maskawa's main political proposition:

• Support for Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution
• Criticizing Japanese politician visits the Yasukuni Shrine
• Support for selective couple surname system

See also

• Progress of Theoretical Physics
• List of Japanese Nobel laureates
• List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Kyoto University