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Masatoshi Koshiba

Masatoshi KoshibaBorn: 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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