Shoichi Sakata

Shoichi Sakata (Japanese坂 田 昌 一; * January 18, 1911 near Hiroshima, † October 16, 1970 ) was a Japanese theoretical physicist.

Life

Sakata studied 1929-1933 Physics at the Imperial University of Tokyo in Yoshio Nishina and then at the Imperial University of Kyoto in Hideki Yukawa, with which he in 1937 ( was previously a year at the private research organization RIKEN, short for Rikagaku KENKYUSHO ) in Osaka whose meson of nuclear forces developed ( by Yukawa in 1935 justified). In 1939 he went with Yukawa at the Kyoto University, where he was a lecturer. From 1942 he was professor at the University of Nagoya, which he remained until his death.

Sakata was in the 1950s and 1960s in Japan 's leading elementary theorists. He founded a great school, was one of his students, among others Yoichiro Nambu. He became known in the 1950s for its precursor ( and initial competitors ) of the quark model of hadrons, the Sakata model of 1956, which is also the group SU (3) used, but instead of quarks as basic building blocks proton, neutron and lambda particles ( the strange quark has a ) had. The neutral pion was assembled according to the model, for example, proton and anti- proton. It was from Sakata to explain the Gell-Mann - Nishijima formula (1953 ) conceived and still used for example in the book by Harry Lipkin, Lie Groups for Pedestrians. In 1960 he expanded his model with his staff at the University of Nagoya (including Z. Maki, M. Nakagawa, Y. Onuki ) for " Nagoya - model ", which also included leptons. Even then, they developed a neutrino mixing matrix ( in the early 1960s, there were the first signs of a second neutrino variety), a precursor to the currently accepted theory of neutrino oscillations. The Nagoya - model was the inspiration for the later Kobayashi - Masukawa matrix in the weak interaction, which mixes the quark flavors and was introduced by Kobayashi and Toshihide Masukawa 1973.

Sakata was a committed Marxist and politically active leader in the civil rights movement Jiyu Jinken Kyōkai (English Japan Civil Liberties Union ) and in 1966 a member of the Russell Tribunal. His Marxist philosophy of science was very influential in Japan. He was honored in 1948 with the Asahi Prize.