Nobel prize for particle physics research
Tuesday, 07 Oct 2008 18:05
Yoichiro Nambu has been jointly awarded the Nobel prize
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The Nobel prize in physics is to be awarded to two Japanese scientists and an American expert, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced.
Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa and Yoichiro Nambu will share the prestigious science prize for their work into the building blocks of matter.
The academy praised the work of Mr Nambu, 87, in formulating "his mathematical description of spontaneous broken symmetry in elementary particle physics".
"Spontaneous broken symmetry conceals natures order under an apparently jumbled surface. It has proved to be extremely useful, and [Mr] Nambu's theories permeate the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The model unifies the smallest building blocks of all matter and three of nature's four forces in one single theory," a statement from the royal academy declared.
The work of Mr Kobayashi, 64, and Mr Maskawa, 68, in predicting the existence of three families of particles known as quarks, was also praised.
"These spontaneous occurrences seem to have existed in nature since the very beginning of the universe and came as a complete surprise when they first appeared in particle experiments in 1964. It is only in recent years that scientists have come to fully confirm the explanations that [Mr] Kobayashi and [Mr] Maskawa made in 1972. It is for this work that they are now awarded the Nobel prize in physics."