Creativity and Intuition: A Physicist Looks at East and West

Hideki Yukawa, the son of a Kyoto University geology professor, has done important theoretical work on elementary particles and nuclear forces. In particular, he predicted the existence of the pi-meson(pion) and the short-range nuclear force associated with this particle. For his contribution, he received the 1949 Nobel Prize in physics, the first Japanese to receive this honor. In the early 1930s, Yukawa searched for the force that holds the atomic nucleus together. He eventually proposed an explanation in terms of an exchange between nucleons of a similar intermediate mass observed in studies of cosmic rays. However, this particle, later named the muon, did not interact strongly with nuclei as required by the theory. In 1947 the pion was discovered, possessing Yukawa's predicted properties. The pion was additionally observed to undergo rapid decay to the muon, which clarified the issue. Yukawa was a professor at Kyoto and Osaka universities, as well as at Columbia and Princeton universities.