| Masatoshi Koshiba  Born: 19-Sep-1926
Birthplace: Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: Asian
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Physicist, Astronomer Nationality: Japan
Executive summary: Detected cosmic neutrinos Masatoshi Koshiba has said that while attending the University of Tokyo he was more interested in studying German art than science, until the teacher of his required class in physics told him he was not smart enough to master the topic. "That made me furious", Koshiba later recalled, "so I took the entrance exam for the physics department."
In a long career in Japan and America, Koshiba became an expert on neutrinos, the ghostly and omnipresent particles which result from nuclear decay reactions. In 1987 he confirmed Raymond Davis, Jr's experiments that showed, to the bafflement of physicists, that the number of solar neutrinos present in the Earth's atmosphere is actually about one-third of what scientists had previously expected. In his best known work, Koshiba explained that the number of neutrinos had been depleted because neutrinos can change characteristics in transit. He was awarded the highest honor in science, the Nobel Prize, in 2002.
Wife: Kyoko Kato (m. 5-Oct-1959)
High School: First Higher School, Tokyo, Japan
University: BS Physics, University of Tokyo (1951)
University: PhD Physics, University of Rochester (1955)
Teacher: Physics, Institute of Nuclear Study, University of Tokyo (1958-70)
Professor: Physics, University of Chicago (1970-87)
Professor: Physics, Tokai University (1987-97)
Nishina Memorial Award 1987
Asahi Press Award 1988
Japanese Order of Culture 1988
The Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy 1989
AAS Bruno Rossi Prize 1989
FSF Fujiwara Prize 1997
Humboldt Foundation Prize 1997
Person of Cultural Merit 1997
Asahi Press Award 1999
Wolf Prize in Physics 2000 (with Raymond Davis, Jr.)
APS W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics 2002
Nobel Prize for Physics 2002 (with Raymond Davis, Jr. and Riccardo Giacconi)
Benjamin Franklin Medal 2003 (Franklin Institute)
Order of the Rising Sun 2003
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Board of Sponsors
American Physical Society Foreign Member
Bangladesh Academy of Sciences Foreign Member
Japan Academy
Japanese Astronomical Society
Japanese Physical Society
Japanese Ancestry
Risk Factors: Polio
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