Yoshio Nishina and the Dawn of Nuclear and Particle Physics

A tribute to Yoshio Nishina, the Father of Nuclear and Particle Physics in Japan, will be given on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Nishina Memorial Foundation. Nishina, as a chief scientist of RIKEN, not only encouraged Yukawa's revolutionary idea in 1935, but also carried out various experimental programs, in particular, an effort to find an experimental signature for the predicted meson. His team discovered a new particle (later called the muon) in cosmic rays, and published the exciting result in Phys. Rev. (1937), at nearly the same time as Neddermeyer and Anderson. He also built cyclotrons in the 1930's and started various scientific work using accelerated beams. He also emphasized the importance of an inter-university research network, which was the spirit behind the founding of the Institute for Nuclear Study (INS) of the University of Tokyo in 1955 and eventually of KEK in 1971.