Japanese theoretical physicist (1940?2021)
Toshihide Maskawa
(or
Masukawa
)
(
益川 敏英
,
Masukawa Toshihide
, 7 February 1940 ? 23 July 2021)
was 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."
[1]
Early life and education
[
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]
Maskawa was born in
Nagoya
, Japan. After
World War II
ended, the Maskawa family operated as a 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 physicist
Shoichi Sakata
.
[2]
[3]
[4]
From early life Maskawa liked
trivia
, also studied
mathematics
,
chemistry
,
linguistics
and various books. In high school, he loved
novels
, especially detective and mystery stories and novels by
Ry?nosuke Akutagawa
.
[2]
Career
[
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]
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",
[5]
is the fourth most cited high energy physics paper of all time as of 2010.
[6]
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
.
[1]
Maskawa was director of the
Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics
from 1997 to 2003.
[7]
He was special professor and director general of Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe at
Nagoya University
,
[8]
director of Maskawa Institute for Science and Culture at
Kyoto Sangyo University
[9]
and professor emeritus at
Kyoto University
.
Nobel lecture
[
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]
On 8 December 2008, after Maskawa told the audience "Sorry, I cannot speak English", he delivered his Nobel lecture on “What Did CP Violation Tell Us?” in Japanese language, at
Stockholm University
. The audience followed the subtitles on the screen behind him.
[10]
Personal life
[
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]
Maskawa married Akiko Takahashi in 1967. The couple have two children, Kazuki and Tokifuji.
Death
[
edit
]
On 23 July 2021 at the same day as the
opening ceremony
of
Tokyo
Summer Olympic Games
, Maskawa died of
oral cancer
at his home in
Kyoto
at the age of 81.
[11]
[12]
Although his death was unrelated to triple disaster and COVID-19 infection. He was
cremated
in October 2021 after the private funeral.
Professional record
[
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]
Recognition
[
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]
Political proposition
[
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]
In 2013, Maskawa and chemistry Nobel laureate
Hideki Shirakawa
issued a statement against the Japanese
State Secrecy Law
.
[13]
" The following is Maskawa's main political proposition:
See also
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References
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External links
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