Duke Ellington
93% Profile Match
Asahi Shimbun company, Asahi Graph, 30 November 1955, public domain · Photograph of Hideki Yukawa from the Asahi Graph issue of 30 November 1955, credited to the Asahi Shimbun company, scanned and hosted on Wikimedia Commons as 'Yukawa Hideki.JPG'. Rights basis: published in Japan in 1955, before the end of 1956, so public domain in Japan under the Japanese copyright law transitional rule for old photographs and therefore in the public domain in the United States (public domain in the source country on the 1996 URAA date); Commons tags it as an old-photograph public-domain file. Saved at the Commons original size of 450 x 550, no resizing. Caveat: the individual photographer is not named, and the basis depends on the 1955 publication date given on the file page. · Public domain (Japan, published before 1956)
physicist · 20th Century
Hideki Yukawa
1907–1981
Known For
scientific
Not yet included in personality matching — the documented evidence doesn't yet cover enough of the personality model. Everything else on this page is fully available.
Trait Constellation
Key Achievements
In 1935 he proposed that the force binding the atomic nucleus comes from the exchange of a new, heavier particle, and estimated its mass at about 200 times that of the electron; the particle came to be called the meson.
Cosmic-ray particles of about the predicted mass were found in 1937 and the pion was identified in 1947; he received the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physics, recorded as the first for a Japanese physicist.
With Sakata, Taketani and Kobayashi he developed meson theory further, and from 1953 he directed Kyoto University's Research Institute for Fundamental Physics while editing the journal Progress of Theoretical Physics.
Moments That Reveal Them
In January 1937 he sent Nature a letter suggesting that anomalous cosmic-ray tracks might be mesons; it was rejected, and he published the same note in a Japanese society journal that July.
This is consistent with persisting with an idea after a setback rather than dropping it. Persistence
After the Tamm and Ivanenko calculations appeared in 1934 he resolved not to look among known particles for the quantum of the nuclear force, which led to the meson theory.
This is consistent with revising a working assumption when a competing approach hit a wall. Belief Updating
Turning Points
His 1935 paper was largely ignored for about two years, until 1937 cosmic-ray observations of particles of intermediate mass made him internationally known.
This is consistent with a career in which recognition came after an experimental confirmation rather than at first publication. Persistence
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Sources
- Hideki Yukawa (Q155777), verified live via the Wikidata API (2026-10-24): description 'Japanese theoretical physicist (1907-1981)', born 1907-01-23, died 1981-09-08, Korean label 'Yukawa Hideki' in Hangul. Orientation only; not used as support for any row.
- Nobel Prize in Physics 1949, Award Ceremony Speech by Professor I. Waller of the Nobel Committee for Physics (NobelPrize.org), read in full. CANONICAL SIGNIFICANCE SOURCE: explains that Yukawa in 1934 predicted the existence of mesons from a theoretical study of nuclear forces, modelling the nuclear force on the electromagnetic field, found a relation between the range of the force and the particle mass (about 200 electron masses), pointed to cosmic rays, and was vindicated by the 1937 cosmic-ray observations and Powell's later work; says Yukawa and his Japanese collaborators took the lead in developing the theory. Award-body speech: admiring and retrospective.
- Hideki Yukawa, Biographical (NobelPrize.org, written at the time of the 1949 award), read in full: Kyoto and Osaka university posts, the 1935 paper 'On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I', encouragement by the 1937 cosmic-ray discovery, work on a nonlocal field theory from 1947, visiting posts at Princeton and Columbia, editing the English-language journal Progress of Theoretical Physics, directorship of the Kyoto research institute, academy memberships and honours. Official biography; factual and admiring.
- Laurie M. Brown, 'Yukawa, Hideki', Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Charles Scribner's Sons / Encyclopedia.com), read in full: scholarly account of Yukawa's training and independence, the 1933-34 failed attempts, the reaction to the Tamm and Ivanenko papers, the 1935 meson paper, the two years of neglect, the rejected 1937 Nature letter, the Sakata, Taketani and Kobayashi collaborations, the resolution of the two-meson puzzle by Sakata, Inoue and Tanikawa, and Yukawa's later nonlocal-field programme and refusal to accept renormalization, which the author says plays no major role in current physics. Independent historian of physics (author of the Physics Today article on the same subject); includes critical and limiting judgements.
- 'Yukawa Hideki: Nobel Laureate in Physics in the Cause of Peace' (Nippon.com, 5 October 2021, by a physicist who knew him), read in full: schooling in the classics, five years of research without a mentor after graduating, the 1934 meson theory, the 1937 cosmic-ray confirmation and the 1942 Tanikawa-Sakata two-meson proposal, and his wartime uncertainty. The later peace and anti-nuclear activism passages were read but excluded from scoring (political activism). Admiring commentary by a colleague.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Yukawa Hideki' (revised 19 January 2026), read in full: career dates, the 1935 U-quantum theory, the 1937 muon observation that established his fame, the later finding that the muon was not the carrier particle, and that meson theory was later supplanted by quantum chromodynamics. Used for the limiting and critical context.
- Wikimedia Commons file page 'Yukawa Hideki.JPG' (Asahi Graph, 30 November 1955, Asahi Shimbun company) with the Commons old-photograph public-domain notice, checked for the portrait only.