Credit to scientific pioneers
(From The Japan Times Oct. 10 issue)

開拓を続けた科学者たちの功績

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' announcement that a Japan-born American and two Japanese will receive the Nobel Prize in physics for 2008 is certainly uplifting news following the recent days of gloom over the impact of the credit crisis that has spread from the United States and the apparent crumbling of Japan's social welfare system. The academy next followed with the announcement that Dr. Osamu Shimomura — the first to isolate a green fluorescent protein that serves as a valuable tool for observing the behavior of specific cancer, nerve and other cells — will share the Nobel Prize in chemistry with two Americans.

We heartily congratulate the trio — Dr. Yoichiro Nambu, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute; Dr. Makoto Kobayashi, a professor emeritus at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture; and Dr. Toshihide Maskawa, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University's Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics — and Dr. Shimomura, a former senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

If we count Dr. Nambu, a naturalized U.S. citizen (1970), as a Japanese, the number of Japanese recipients of the Nobel Prize in the field of science stands at 13: seven physicists, five chemists and one physiologist. The academy praised Dr. Nambu for "the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics," and Drs. Kobayashi and Maskawa for "the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."

Dr. Hideki Yukawa predicted the existence of mesons in 1935. He was a pioneer in elementary particle physics, which attempts to explicate the fundamental units of matter. He became the first Japanese Nobel laureate in 1949. In 1965 and 2002, respectively, Dr. Shinichiro Tomonaga and Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba received the Nobel Prize for their work in elementary particle physics. In receiving their prize, Drs. Nambu, Kobayashi and Maskawa demonstrate that they have inherited and deepened the tradition of theoretical physics in Japan that was spearheaded by Dr. Yukawa. The awards to the trio and to Dr. Shimomura should encourage Japanese researchers in basic science and energize their efforts.

日本生まれの米国人と日本人2人のノーベル物理学賞受賞は、暗いニュースが続く中での朗報だ。がん細胞や神経細胞の分析に役立つ緑色蛍光たんぱく質を分離した下村脩博士も、米国人研究者2人とノーベル化学賞を共同受賞した。

シカゴ大学の南部陽一郎名誉教授、高エネルギー加速器研究機構の小林誠名誉教授、京都大学の益川敏英名誉教授とウッズホール海洋生物学研究所の下村元上席研究員に祝辞を述べたい。

科学分野の日本人受賞は米国籍の南部教授を含むと物理学7、化学5、生理学1の13名。南部教授は「素粒子物理学における自発的対称性の破れの発見」、小林・益川両教授は「クォークが自然界に三世代以上あることを予言する、対称性の破れの起源の発見」で受賞した。

素粒子物理学では、中間子の存在を予測し日本人で初受賞した湯川秀樹教授に、朝永振一郎、小柴昌俊両教授が続き、南部、小林、益川教授らが理論物理学の伝統を継いだ。今回の4名の受賞は日本の基礎科学界に弾みをつけるだろう。