Hideki+Yukawa

Hideki Yukawa: THE Greatest Physicist of the Twentieth Century



Hideki Yukawa was born on January 23rd, 1907 in the Japanese capital of Tokyo. The son of an already prominant scientist, it seemed that Yukawa was born to be a physicist. Much of his work was centered around the acclaimed Kyoto University, however, his ideas were not confined to the island of Japan. By the time Yukawa began working seriously on his various theories (namely his prediction of the meson particle), the world had transformed into one of a global culture. That is, once Yukawa discovered and published his ideas, various physicists throughout the world were able to share in his knowlege and to participate in a sort of brain trust that enabled rapid advancement. In short, there was no better time for Yukawa to have discovered the fundamental knowledge that he did.

The Meson In his studies of elementary particles, Hideki Yukawa came to realize that there was one missing from the known roster. Through logical reasoning, Yukawa determined that this mystery particle would have a charge of zero, a spin of zero, and a mass of about 200 MeV. He published this sort of thought experiement in his paper //On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I.// in 1935, without being able to physically prove this particle's exisance. It took several years, but in 1936 Carl Anderson proved the existance of the muon, a particle similar to, but having slightly different properties than the predicted meson (it was later proved to be a lepton). It was not until the following year in 1937 that the first type of meson, discovered in cosmic rays, was discovered. From this point until about 1947, Yukawa dedicated his time and research to developing a new meson theory to go with his newly discovered particle. We now know a great deal more about the meson than we did in the early half of the twentieth century. For example, we now know that mesons are made up of both an anti-quark and a quark, which accounts for the various zeroes found within its properites. We also know that their average life span does not naturally exceed more that about 10^8 seconds. Mesons are formed naturally by cosmic rays but may also be created in high speed particle accelerators for closer study. We have also since determined that mesons fall under the category of bosons. In recent physics, mesons are used in various experiements to determine more about elementary particles.

Meson angular momentum quantum numbers for //L// = 0, 1, 2, 3 ([|See below]) ||~ //J////P// ||
 * ~ [|//S//] ||~ [|//L//] ||~ [|//J//] ||~ [|//P//]
 * 0 || 0 || 0 || − || 0− ||
 * ^  || 1 || 1 || + || 1+ ||
 * ^  || 2 || 2 || − || 2− ||
 * ^  || 3 || 3 || + || 3+ ||
 * 1 || 0 || 1 || − || 1− ||
 * ^  || 1 || 2, 1, 0 || + || 2+, 1+, 0+ ||
 * ^  || 2 || 3, 2, 1 || − || 3−, 2−, 1− ||
 * ^  || 3 || 4, 3, 2 || + || 4+, 3+, 2+ ||

Hideki Yukawa: Awards, Memberships, and Invitations:
 * Nobel Prize for Physics 1949
 * Visiting Professor Princeton 1948
 * Visiting Professor Colombia 1949
 * Member of the Physical Society and the Science Council of Japan
 * Emeritus Professor of Osaka University
 * Member of the Japan Academy
 * Director of the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics at Kyoto University
 * Fellow of the American Physical Society
 * Foreign Associate of the American National Academy of Sciences
 * Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy (1940)
 * Decoration of Cultural Merit (1943)
 * Honorary Citizen of the City of Kyoto

Papers and Books Links The Yukawa Story: A United States Government presentation on the life of Yukawa media type="youtube" key="n4vZ1MDS31w" height="349" width="425" Meson Creation media type="youtube" key="U-6JdQn1-74" height="349" width="425" Bibliography
 * //On the Interaction of Elementary Particles// (1935)
 * //Introduction to Quantum Mechanics// (1946)
 * //Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles// (1948)
 * Physics Journal Editor: //Progress of Theoretical Physics// (since 1946)

"Hideki Yukawa - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 9 Jun 2011 []

"Meson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. N.p., 18 May 2011. Web. 8 June 2011. [].

Page, Shelley. "The Hadronic Weak Interaction in pp Scattering." //LegacyWeb//. N.p., 24 Feb. 2000. Web. 8 June 2011. []