Background

Hideki Yukawa was born on January 23, 1907, in Azabu, Tokyo, Japan. He was the fifth of seven children born to Takuji and Koyuki Ogawa. His father was employed at the Geological Survey Bureau in Tokyo at the time of Hideki’s birth and a year later was appointed professor of geology at Kyoto Imperial University. Thus, Yukawa grew up in an academically-oriented household which focused his attention on science from his early years.

Education

Yukawa attended the Third High School in Kyoto from 1923 to 1926. There he was a classmate of future Nobel Laureate Sin-Itiro Tomonaga who, for his work on quantum electrodynamics, would go on to share the Nobel Prize with Paul Dirac.

After graduation, Yukawa entered Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University), where he majored in physics. Yukawa’s interest in the subject had been aroused in high school when he discovered a number of books on quantum mechanics and relativity in the school library.

In 1929, Yukawa received his master’s degree from Kyoto and in 1938, he earned his doctorate at Osaka Imperial University (now Osaka University).

During his career, he also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Paris.

Career

In 1929, Yukawa decided to stay on as a research assistant in the laboratory of Kajuro Tamaki at Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University). Then, in 1932, he accepted an appointment as lecturer in physics there.

In 1933 Yukawa accepted a second position as lecturer in physics, this time at Osaka Imperial University (now Osaka University). He continued teaching at Osaka for the next five years, working on his doctorate in physics at the same time. In 1936 he was promoted to associate professor of physics there.

It was during his years at Osaka that Yukawa made the discovery for which he is best known, the meson theory. Yukawa first announced his theory of the meson at scientific meetings in Osaka and Tokyo in October and November 1934, and then in the Proceedings of the Physico-Mathematical Society of Japan in February 1935. It was, however, not until 1947 that Yukawa’s work was fully confirmed.

In the meantime, Yukawa had returned to Kyoto University where he had been appointed a professor of theoretical physics in 1939. The year he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Yukawa came to the United States on a one-year visiting professorship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. At the end of that year, he accepted an appointment at Columbia University, where he remained for four more years. In 1946 he founded the scientific journal Progress of Theoretical Physics, for which he also served as editor.

In 1953 Columbia awarded Yukawa tenure, but he decided nonetheless to return to Japan. There he assumed his previous post at Kyoto University, as well as the newly-created position as director of the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics, an institute established specifically for him by the Japanese government. Although he retired officially from his academic positions in 1970, Yukawa continued to write, speak, and edit his journal. He was also active in organizations that promoted the peaceful use of science and technology.

Yukawa died of pneumonia in Kyoto on September 8, 1981.

Achievements

• Hideki Yukawa was the first citizen of Japan to receive a Nobel Prize, an award given to him in 1949 for his theory of the meson, the subatomic particle that binds the nucleus’ protons and neutrons. The theory caused great interest in scientific circles, especially after such a particle was discovered in cosmic radiation by Carl Anderson, a 1936 Nobel laureate from the California Institute of Technology. Used together by researchers, the work of Yukawa and Anderson provided a noteworthy overture to the 1939 discovery of nuclear fission. Yukawa, however, chose to donate most of his award money to several institutions in Japan, including the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics at Kyoto University.
  
  A large number of scientific papers have been published by Yukawa and many books, including Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946) and Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948), both in Japanese, have come from his pen.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Tabibito

    (This is Yukawa's autobiography of his early years, writte...)

    1981
  • Creativity and intuition 1973
  • On the Interaction of Elementary Particles 1948
  • Scientific works 1979

Views

Quotations: "The results of physics are inevitably connected with the problems of humanity through their application to human society. "

"Usually it has been thought that, particularly in pure science, it is desirable for its progress not to include any value criterion other than true-or-false. We physicists, by experience, have realized that the advent of nuclear weapons dealt a great blow to the above-mentioned way of thinking. "

Membership

Yukawa had honorary memberships of the Royal Society, Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the International Academy of Philosophy and Sciences, and the Pontificia Academia Scientiarum.

Connections

In 1932, Hideki married Sumi Yukawa, a classical Japanese dancer. He adopted his new wife’s family name and went to live with them in Osaka. The couple has produced two children, Harumi and Takaai.

Father:

Takuji Ogawa

Mother:

Koyuki Ogawa

Wife:

Sumi Yukawa

Son:

Harumi Yukawa

Son:

Takaai Yukawa

References

• Hideki Yukawa
  1991
• Masters of Physics: From Galileo to Yukawa Hideki Combining history with biography, this book introduces in plain language the stories of the worlds 50 greatest physicists, who made important contributions to the development of physics from various aspects.
  2014
• Yukawa Hideki to Tomonaga Shinʼichirō
  1992