Masatoshi Koshiba (?? ??

Koshiba Masatoshi, born September 19, 1926) is a Japanese

physicist, known as one of the founders of Neutrino astronomy and jointly won the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002.

He is now Senior Counselor of International Center for Elementary Particle Physics

(ICEPP) and Emeritus Professor of University of Tokyo.

Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Awards
3 Honors
4 Publications
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
Life[edit]

with Jun'ichiro Koizumi and Koichi Tanaka (at the Prime Minister's Official
Residence on October 11, 2002)

with Jun'ichiro Koizumi (at Kamioka Observatory, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research,
University of Tokyo on August 27, 2003)
He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1951 and received a Ph.D. in physics
at the University of Rochester, New York, in 1955. From July 1955 to February 1958
he was Research Associate, Department of Physics, University of Chicago; from March
1958 to October 1963, he was Associate Professor, Institute of Nuclear Study,
University of Tokyo, although from November 1959 to August 1962 he was on leave
from the above as Senior Research Associate with the honorary rank of Associate
Professor and as the Acting Director, Laboratory of High Energy Physics and Cosmic
Radiation, Department of Physics, University of Chicago. At the University of Tokyo
he became Associate Professor in March 1963 and then Professor in March 1970 in the
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, and Emeritus Professor there in 1987.
From 1987 to 1997, Koshiba taught at Tokai University. In 2002, he jointly won the
Nobel Prize in Physics "for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular
for the detection of cosmic neutrinos". (The other shares of that year's Prize were
awarded to Raymond Davis Jr. and Riccardo Giacconi of the U.S.A.)[1]

Koshiba's award-winning work centred on neutrinos, subatomic particles that had

long perplexed scientists. Since the 1920s it had been suspected that the Sun
shines because of nuclear fusion reactions that transform hydrogen into helium and
release energy. Later, theoretical calculations indicated that countless neutrinos
must be released in these reactions and, consequently, that Earth must be exposed
to a constant flood of solar neutrinos. Because neutrinos interact weakly with
matter, however, only one in a trillion is stopped on its way to Earth. Neutrinos
thus developed a reputation as being undetectable.

In the 1980s, Koshiba, drawing on the work done by Raymond Davis Jr, constructed an
underground neutrino detector in a zinc mine in Japan. Called Kamiokande II, it was
an enormous water tank surrounded by electronic detectors to sense flashes of light
produced when neutrinos interacted with atomic nuclei in water molecules. Koshiba
was able to confirm Davis's resultsthat the Sun produces neutrinos and that fewer
neutrinos were found than had been expected (a deficit that became known as the
solar neutrino problem). In 1987 Kamiokande also detected neutrinos from a
supernova explosion outside the Milky Way. After building a larger, more sensitive
detector named Super-Kamiokande, which became operational in 1996, Koshiba found
strong evidence for what scientists had already suspectedthat neutrinos, of which
three types are known, change from one type into another in flight; this resolves
the solar neutrino problem, since early experiments could only detect one type, not
all three.
Koshiba is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, also he is a foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences [2]

Awards[edit]
1987 - Asahi Prize
1987 - Nishina Memorial Prize
1997 - Humboldt Prize
2000 - Wolf Prize in Physics
2002 - Nobel Prize in Physics
2002 - Panofsky Prize
2003 - Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics
Honors[edit]
1985 - Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
1997 - Order of Culture
2002 - Honorary citizenship of Suginami
2002 - Honorary doctor of Meiji University
2003 - Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun
2003 - In commemoration of the Nobel Prize-winning by Masatoshi Koshiba, Koshiba
hall was established at the University of Tokyo's School of science.[3]
2003 - Honorary citizenship of Tokyo
2003 - Emeritus Professor of the University of Tokyo
Publications[edit]
Koshiba, M.; Fukuda, Y; et al. (1998). "Evidence for Oscillation of Atmospheric
Neutrinos". Physical Review Letters. 81 (8): 1562. Bibcode:1998PhRvL..81.1562F.
arXiv:hep-ex/9807003?Freely accessible. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.1562.
Koshiba, M.; Fukuda, Y; et al. (1999). "Constraints on Neutrino Oscillation
Parameters from the Measurement of Day-Night Solar Neutrino Fluxes at Super-
Kamiokande". Physical Review Letters. 82 (9): 1810. Bibcode:1999PhRvL..82.1810F.
arXiv:hep-ex/9812009?Freely accessible. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.1810