Kobayashi, Makoto (1944-…), a Japanese physicist, won a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics. He shared the prize with fellow Japanese physicist Toshihide Maskawa. Together, they identified the origin of a particular broken symmetry, an important kind of relationship among subatomic particles. Subatomic particles are pieces of matter smaller than atoms. Kobayashi and Maskawa’s work predicted the existence of a new family of particles, which were later discovered. Their work built on a theory of broken symmetry proposed by the Japanese-born American physicist Yoichiro Nambu, who also won a share of the prize.
In particle physics, scientists use the term symmetry to describe the idea that for every subatomic particle, there exists an opposite particle with similar properties. For example, the electron has the positron, a similar particle with an opposite electrical charge. However, scientists think that if such particle pairs shared a perfect symmetry, the universe could not exist as we know it. Thus, they thought that the particles must share a symmetry that is somehow incomplete or “broken.” In 1960, Nambu proposed a mathematical description of broken symmetry that could be applied to subatomic particles. But scientists did not have a model of subatomic physics with the right particles to fit this theory.
In 1972, Kobayashi and Maskawa proposed a model of the subatomic physics that included a new family of quarks, a type of subatomic particle. These two new quarks helped explain the theory of how broken symmetry occurs. Scientists announced the discovery of the last of the proposed quarks in 1995. Kobayashi and Maskawa’s work helped in the development of the Standard Model, a fundamental theory of physics that describes all the basic subatomic particles and their interactions.
Kobayashi was born on April 7, 1944, in Nagoya, Japan. He earned his doctorate degree from Nagoya University in 1972. He then became a research associate at Kyoto University. In 1979, he became a professor at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, known by the Japanese abbreviation KEK, in Tsukuba.
See also Maskawa, Toshihide ; Nambu, Yoichiro .
