Physicist’s research influenced generations
Yoichiro Nambu, a theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on subatomic particles, bringing about a fuller understanding of the behaviour of matter at the most basic levels, died July 5 in Osaka, Japan. He was 94.
His death was announced by Osaka University, where he was an honorary professor. The cause was a heart attack.
Nambu, who had also been affiliated the University of Chicago since 1954, was a towering figure in physics. His research on the nature of atomic properties has influenced generations of scientists and has become part of the foundation of what physicists call the Standard Model, or a theoretical explanation of the fundamental structure of nature.
He shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics with two Japanese researchers, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa, who were recognized for their work on subatomic particles called quarks.
The three scientists, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel, “give us a deeper understanding of what happens far inside the tiniest building blocks of matter.”
Nambu’s most important discovery concerned a phenomenon known as spontaneous symmetry breaking.
Nambu often described the phenomenon in terms of a crowd of people standing in an open area, looking out in random directions. But if one person gazes intently in one direction, others will follow suit, acting on an unseen force.
Nambu first defined spontaneous symmetry breaking in 1960, and it has become an underlying principle of much theoretical work in physics.
With another scientist, MooYoung Han, Nambu developed a theory in 1965 to describe how protons and neutrons are bound together in the nucleus of an atom.
In addition to his other work, Nambu was considered a seminal thinker in the formulation of string theory. A still-developing field, string theory seeks to describe the composition of elementary materials in terms of a subatomic object known as a string. Some experts believe advances in string theory may lead to a grand unification theory, explaining all four of the fundamental forces of nature.
Yoichiro Nambu was born Jan. 18, 1921, in Tokyo. His father was a teacher. Nambu grew up in a rural part of Japan, and his childhood hero was inventor Thomas Edison. After receiving a master’s degree in physics from the University of Tokyo in 1942, he entered the Japanese army and worked at a radar laboratory during the Second World War. He survived the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo during the war.
While teaching at a university in Osaka, Nambu received a doctorate in physics from the University of Tokyo in 1952. That year, he was invited to the United States by Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who ran the U.S. nuclear program that produced the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during the Second World War.
While in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Nambu met Albert Einstein. In 1954, Nambu became a researcher at the University of Chicago and, four years later, a full professor. He became a U.S. citizen in 1970.
Survivors include his wife since 1945, Chieko Hida, a son and sister.