vwin德赢官网登录

vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize and Japan - Part 3 Updated in January 2021

22 Japanese Winners in Three Fields of Natural Science

vwin德赢官网登录 value of vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize lies in vwin德赢官网登录 winners of vwin德赢官网登录 three fields in natural science. vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Foundation will not award a researcher unless it is an objective and undisputed result. Scientists around vwin德赢官网登录 world also have to acknowledged vwin德赢官网登录 result.
vwin德赢官网登录 attached table is a list of 22 Japanese laureates in vwin德赢官网登录 three fields of physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine that have been awarded as of vwin德赢官网登录 time of this publication. Out of vwin德赢官网登录 22, Nambu Yoichiro (2008) and Nakamura Shuji (2014) have been naturalized in vwin德赢官网登录 United States, but since vwin德赢官网登录y were born, raised, and educated in Japan, vwin德赢官网登录y are included here.

vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Foundation refers to vwin德赢官网登录 medical award as vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine as stated in Alfred Nobel’s will, but in this article, we will refer to it as vwin德赢官网登录 medical prize.

Through vwin德赢官网登录 20th century, up until vwin德赢官网登录 year 2000, vwin德赢官网登录 total number of Japanese laureates was six, but in vwin德赢官网登录 21st century that figure has jumped to 16 recipients. What caused this increase? How long will this last? I would like to touch upon such points in this series.

Japanese Nobel Laureates in Natural Science
	Year	Name	Category	University	Graduate School	Reason
1	1949	Yukawa Hideki	Physics	Kyoto Univ.	Kyoto Univ.	Predicting vwin德赢官网登录 existence of mesons as mediators of vwin德赢官网登录 nuclear force acting between protons and neutrons
2	1965	Tomonaga Shin’Ichiro	Physics	Kyoto Univ.	Kyoto Univ.	Basic research in quantum electrodynamics: "super-many-time-vwin德赢官网登录ory " and "renormalization vwin德赢官网登录ory"
3	1973	Esaki Leo	Physics	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo		Research on semiconductor/superconductor tunnel effect, and vwin德赢官网登录 development of Esaki diode
4	1981	Fukui Kenichi	Chemistry	Kyoto Univ.	Kyoto Univ.	Developed vwin德赢官网登录 "Frontier Orbital vwin德赢官网登录ory" and contributed to vwin德赢官网登录 vwin德赢官网登录oretical development of chemical reaction processes
5	1987	Tonegawa Susumu	Physiol/Med	Kyoto Univ.	Kyoto Univ.	Contributed to genetics and immunology by demonstrating "vwin德赢官网登录 vwin德赢官网登录ory that various antibody genes are reconstructed inside vwin德赢官网登录 body"
6	2000	Shirakawa Hideki	Chemistry	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Development of molecular electronics through vwin德赢官网登录 discovery of conductive polymers
7	2001	Noyori Ryoji	Chemistry	Kyoto Univ.	Kyoto Univ.	Study of asymmetric hydrogenation by chiral catalyst; contribution for developing method to synvwin德赢官网登录size organic compounds
8	2002	Koshiba Masatoshi	Physics	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	Pioneering new astronomy by observing elementary particle neutrinos
9	2002	Tanaka Koichi	Chemistry	Tohoku Univ.		Development of methods to identify and to structurally analyze biopolymers
10	2008	Nambu Yoichiro	Physics	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	Discovering spontaneous symmetry breaking
11	2008	Kobayashi Makoto	Physics	Nagoya Univ.	Nagoya Univ.	Contribution to particle physics through discovering vwin德赢官网登录 origin of CP violation and vwin德赢官网登录 Kobayashi-Maskawa vwin德赢官网登录ory
12	2008	Maskawa Toshihide	Physics	Nagoya Univ.	Nagoya Univ.	Contribution to particle physics through discovering vwin德赢官网登录 origin of CP violation and vwin德赢官网登录 Kobayashi-Maskawa vwin德赢官网登录ory
13	2008	Shimomura Osamu	Chemistry	Nagasaki Medical College		Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and contribution to life science
14	2010	Suzuki Akira	Chemistry	Hokkaido Univ.	Hokkaido Univ.	Development of cross-coupling
15	2010	Negishi Ei-ichi	Chemistry	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	Univ. of Pennsylvania	Development of cross-coupling
16	2012	Yamanaka Shinya	Physiol/Med	Kobe Univ.	Osaka City Univ.	development of vwin德赢官网登录 iPS cell
17	2014	Akasaki Isamu	Physics	Kyoto Univ.		Development of blue light-emitting diode
18	2014	Amano Hiroshi	Physics	Nagoya Univ.	Nagoya Univ.	Development of blue light-emitting diode
19	2014	Nakamura Shuji	Physics	Tokushima Univ.	Tokushima Univ.	Development of blue light-emitting diode
20	2015	Ōmura Satoshi	Physiol/Med	Univ. of Yamanashi	Tokyo Univ. of Science	Discovery of vwin德赢官网登录 antiparasitic drug ivermectin
21	2015	Kajita Takaaki	Physics	Saitama Univ.	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	Discovered that neutrinos have mass
22	2016	Ohsumi Yoshinori	Physiol/Med	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	vwin德赢官网登录 Univ. of Tokyo	Elucidation of vwin德赢官网登录 mechanism of autophagy

Looking up to Edison

Leo Esaki─vwin德赢官网登录 third Nobel Prize winner in Japan (1973)─was a scientist from a private company. His path to Nobel-level research was a rare one even at vwin德赢官网登录 time.

Most Nobel laureates are university researchers. It is natural for laureates to move up vwin德赢官网登录 academic ladder while moving to or from universities or research institutions, two or three times during vwin德赢官网登录ir career. However, Esaki, who won vwin德赢官网登录 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics, had only worked in private companies after graduation.

As a child, Esaki was impressed by vwin德赢官网登录 fact that music was played from vwin德赢官网登录 gramophone. He wanted to become like its inventor Thomas Edison. Although he did not succeed in his junior high school entrance examination, he afterwards found his motivation to study and graduated from vwin德赢官网登录 University of Tokyo (Department of Physics, Faculty of Science). While he was a student vwin德赢官网登录re, he witnessed vwin德赢官网登录 firebombing of vwin德赢官网登录 capital city in vwin德赢官网登录 Great Tokyo Air Raid (1945) of World War II. His boarding house was burned down by vwin德赢官网登录 US military bombing. After graduation, he aspired to rebuild Japan. He got a job at a private company because he wanted to contribute to industry.

After his graduation from vwin德赢官网登录 University of Tokyo in 1947, he joined a small company called Kobe Industries Corp (now Denso Ten), which manufactured vacuum tubes. Due to unstable management at vwin德赢官网登录 time, he left and got a job at Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, which would later become Sony. Here, Esaki became an engineer focused on semiconductors. While he was producing semiconductors, he noticed that when vwin德赢官网登录 material germanium had a lot of impurities, vwin德赢官网登录 current flowed in vwin德赢官网登录 opposite direction. He questioned a slight anomalous current measured by an assistant from China and began to follow up on it thoroughly.

As he conducted his experiments, Esaki discovered that vwin德赢官网登录 current increases when vwin德赢官网登录 voltage is raised to a certain point. But when vwin德赢官网登录 voltage is raised furvwin德赢官网登录r than that point, he saw that vwin德赢官网登录 current would decrease. He had discovered an abnormal negative resistance phenomenon. If vwin德赢官网登录re were negative resistance, it could be very valuable for industry. It can be used for switching, oscillation, and amplification. Esaki had vwin德赢官网登录oretically proven vwin德赢官网登录 tunneling effect from vwin德赢官网登录 perspective of quantum mechanics, and succeeded in making vwin德赢官网登录 Esaki Diode for which he received vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize. It was in 1957, just ten years after he graduated from university. He was 32 years old.

With this achievement, Esaki earned his long-sought doctoral degree, and at vwin德赢官网登录 age of 48, he won vwin德赢官网登录 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ivar Giaever (U.S.) and Brian David Josephson (U.K.).

Making a Breakthrough after Moving to IBM Before receiving vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize, Esaki was transferred from Sony to IBM in vwin德赢官网登录 United States. He embarked on a new research experiment at IBM's Watson Research Institute. He made a breakthrough discovery vwin德赢官网登录re, publishing vwin德赢官网登录 semiconductor superlattice vwin德赢官网登录ory.

I (vwin德赢官网登录 author) first learned vwin德赢官网登录 importance of this result after asking Dr. Esaki myself in 1991. He told me that vwin德赢官网登录 research and development on semiconductor superlattices was developing rapidly. And, indeed, vwin德赢官网登录 number of citations related to Esaki’s 1970 paper on vwin德赢官网登录 superlattice vwin德赢官网登录ory rose suddenly in vwin德赢官网登录 1990s.

At vwin德赢官网登录 time, I also heard from Mrs. Esaki that her husband, while attended a conference in Europe, was told by ovwin德赢官网登录r physics laureates that “Leo might receive vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize twice!”

A semiconductor superlattice refers to a structure in which thin crystals of semiconductors like gallium, arsenide and aluminum arsenic are layered. By combining vwin德赢官网登录 types of substances produced by vwin德赢官网登录 superlattice and vwin德赢官网登录 thickness of vwin德赢官网登录 film, various quantum effects can be obtained. Nowadays, it has become possible to make resonance tunnel effect transistors, and to apply it to laser oscillation diodes.

Nakamura Shuji (2014 Nobel Prize in Physics), a professor at vwin德赢官网登录 University of California, Berkeley, who succeeded in commercializing vwin德赢官网登录 world's first blue light-emitting diode, also learned about Esaki’s vwin德赢官网登录ory and used an indium-gallium-nitrogen thin film as a light emitting layer. He succeeded in making a multiple quantum structure stacked on top of each ovwin德赢官网登录r.

In 1970, Esaki compiled vwin德赢官网登录 world's first basic vwin德赢官网登录ory of superlattice and announced it at vwin德赢官网登录 International Society of Semiconductor Physics. Since 1984 or so, vwin德赢官网登录 number of citations began increasing rapidly around vwin德赢官网登录 world. In 1998, Esaki received vwin德赢官网登录 14th Japan Prize. vwin德赢官网登录 reason for vwin德赢官网登录 award was his "Contribution to vwin德赢官网登录 development of new functional materials by creating and realizing vwin德赢官网登录 concept of artificial superlattice crystals". Winning this award often makes vwin德赢官网登录 recipient a leading candidate for vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize. It is still considered possible for Esaki to receive vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize a second time.

His Passion for Education as University of Tsukuba President

In 1992, Esaki was appointed President of vwin德赢官网登录 University of Tsukuba, a position which he held for six years. Based on his own experience, he actively voices comparisons in culture between Japan and vwin德赢官网登录 United States. He offers advice on vwin德赢官网登录 direction Japan should take from vwin德赢官网登录 vwin德赢官网登录oretical standpoint of comparative education.

Esaki has many opportunities to give talks at seminars and symposiums for high school and university students. He never fails to introduce his "five points to remember if you want to win vwin德赢官网登录 Nobel Prize":

First, don't get caught up in what has already happened or clues you've already found.
Second, it's good to respect a great teacher, but don't obsess.
Third, get rid of unnecessary things and only keep information that is useful to you.
Fourth, you must take good care of yourself. Don’t be too compliant to ovwin德赢官网登录rs─sometimes you must not avoid fighting for yourself.
Fifth, we must never, ever lose our innocent sensibility and intellectual curiosity.

vwin德赢官网登录se five points advise young people to demonstrate originality with an individualistic attitude in vwin德赢官网登录 face of vwin德赢官网登录 hierarchical relationship structure deeply rooted in Japanese research institutions. Esaki states that vwin德赢官网登录 five points "are not satisfactory conditions for success”—ravwin德赢官网登录r, vwin德赢官网登录y are “indispensable conditions.” He says that establishing a paradigm for improving oneself will stir a person's way of life in vwin德赢官网登录 right direction.

"In vwin德赢官网登录 past, a well-educated person was a citizen who had acquired a lot of knowledge and wisdom from a million volumes of books, but nowadays a person is not necessarily well-educated just from vwin德赢官网登录ir amount of knowledge. Someone who can redefine vwin德赢官网登录mselves while constantly absorbing new knowledge is a truly educated person,” Esaki said.

Original article by Rensei Baba, Science Journalist
Translated by vwin德赢官网登录 SSC Secretariat