Hideki Yukawa created his meson theory while an assistant professor at Osaka University. Both were destroyed by the American occupation force after the war. He had built one of the two large cyclotrons in Japan (the other being Yoshio Nishina's). Seishi Kikuchi (known for the Kikuchi electron diffraction pattern) was among the faculty. The department chair was Hidetsugu Yagi (of Yagi antennas). The founding president was Hantaro Nagaoka, renowned by his Saturnian models of atoms prior to the Rutherford experiment. It was a young university among seven major national universities in Japan and was reputed for its activity in modern physics. I entered the department of physics of Osaka University in 1950, following the recommendation of my high school physics teacher. Among various disciplines, physics looked to be most attractive. With this background, it was no wonder that I chose experimental fields while in university. As I grew into a college student, I became charmed by electronic circuits. The school life was shiny, and I regained active youth.įrom my childhood, I was fond of hands-on work: drawing, building models, carving wood, etc. Luckily, I was admitted to the national Osaka High School, one of the elite high schools, a year earlier than standard. I studied very hard to enter an upper school. I was also hungry for education and, thus, eager to get out of my deteriorated middle school. Over the following couple of years, life was miserable with hunger and depression. The War ended in 1945 when I was 14 years old. We were sent to factories as workers and soon exposed to heavy bombardment. Regular classes lasted less than two years. The situation became rapidly worse, when I proceeded to middle school (in 1943). Although the Pacific War had already broken out in 1941, life was still calm during my time in primary school. I was born in 1931 in a city near Osaka and was the middle of three sons. MY SCHOOL TIME AND FOLLOWING COSMIC-RAY RESEARCH To meet such a chance is rare in one's lifetime. I was not only a witness of the drama of the rapid development but I was also able to take part in it as one of the players. Through these tough experiences, I learned many valuable lessons.Īdvances in X-ray astronomy have been amazingly fast. I became involved in a number of satellite missions. This was the seminal period of space science in Japan. The second was moving from Nagoya University to ISAS (Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science, University of Tokyo, which later became the National Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, as explained below), where I spent twenty years, the second half of my research life. The first turning point was the occasion to work in the Netherlands, during which period my interest drifted from original cosmic-ray research into cosmic X-ray research discovered by Giacconi and his collaborators. Looking back, I realize now that I had also gone through turning points twice. Even so, it was far beyond my imagination that I would enter the astrophysics field, where my research career eventually ended up.Įverybody may encounter turning points in one's life. As time went on, according to what I chose to work on, my interest gradually shifted. However, it was not easy in Japan at that time to find experimental subjects in this field, except in cosmic-ray physics. This could have influenced me, since it looked to be a pioneering field. Hideki Yukawa received the Nobel Prize for his meson theory in 1949, which was the year I entered university. First, I wished to go into the field of elementary particle physics. When I look back at my past, it surprises me that so little was foreseen.
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