Hideki Yukawa

In 1932, he married Sumi Yukawa and took her family name. They had two sons, Harumi and Takaaki.

In 1953, Japan honored him by making him the director of the newly established Research Institute for Fundamental Physics at Kyoto University.

Hideki was appointed as the chairman of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in the year 1953.

Hideki Yukawa was born Hideki Ogawa on 23 January1907 in Tokyo, Japan. His father’s name was Takuji Ogawa and he belonged to the Samurai clan. Yukawa was raised in Kyoto, Japan into a family of academicians. His father was a professor of Geology at the Kyoto University. This drew Yukawa’s attention to the field of Science.

Though he was born in Tokyo, he received his formal education in Kyoto and he considered it his home. In the year 1923, Yukawa was enrolled in the Third High School in Kyoto. Another renowned physicist Sin-itiro Tomonaga also studied in the same school and was a batch mate of Yukawa.

After his schooling, Yukawa went to study at the Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University) and in the year 1926 received his graduate degree.

Upon graduating from the Kyoto University in 1929, Hideki stayed back to pursue teaching. He was appointed as a lecturer and taught for four years. This was the beginning of his brilliant career in academic research and teaching.

In 1933, Hideki Yukawa at the age of 23 became an assistant professor at Osaka University in Japan, which further fuelled his academic research and interests.

During the year 1948-49, Hideki was appointed as a visiting professor in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. In 1949 he was appointed as a professor of Physics at the Columbia University, USA.

In the year 1935, he published a paper “On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I." (Proc. Phys.-Math. Soc. Japan, 17, p. 48). In this paper, he proposed a new field theory of nuclear forces.

In this theory, he proposed the theory of a strong and weak nuclear force. He showed a new type of particle as their carrier particle. This was called the U-quantum which was later renamed meson because it had the mass between electron and proton.

This theory established him as the founder of the Meson theory and it became a major influence on nuclear and high-energy physics.

From the year 1947, Yukawa dedicated his life to the study of the theory of elementary particles which was based on his idea of “non-local field”.

During his long years of research, Yukawa also worked on the theory of K-Capture. In this theory, a low energy electron is absorbed by the nucleus.