Hideki Yukawa
He received the Nobel Prize (physics) for the first time as a Japanese scholar. In 1935, Yukawa published a monumental paper, "On the Interaction of Elementary Particles, I", and introduced a new particle called "meson", in order to explain both the strong interaction and the weak interaction between elementary particles. But here, we may confine ourselves to the strong interaction within the nucleus of an atom. Yukawa thought that the binding force within nucleus, between proton and neutron, for instance, can be explained only by introducing a new particle, about 200 times heavier than electron. And a number of other articles, by Yukawa and collaborators, followed.
He was appointed to a professr of mechanics in Kyoto University in 1939; but the far greater honor, the Nobel prize was given for this work in 1949; and Japanese people who were depressed after the World War II, welcomed this news enthusiastically, and Yukawa became a national hero since then.
He was deeply impressed by the personality of Einstein, and it seems that he participated in such social activities as Pugwash conferences somehow out of the sense of duty prompted by Einstein, among others, as far as one can judge from his writings. But, of course, this does not depriciate his activities in the least.
To Yukawa Page in the Nobel Foundation//To Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto Univ.
