Oct 7, 2008 4:14 pm US/Central
U. Of C. Professor Among Nobel Prize Winners
Professor Yoichiro Nambu Won Half Of Subatomic Physics Prize
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Retired University of Chicago physics professor Yoichiro Nambu was awarded a Nobel Prize for his discoveries in the world of subatomic particles.
CBS
A retired University of Chicago physics professor woke up a winner Tuesday morning, to a call he had almost given up on ever receiving.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, won the Nobel Prize in physics along with two Japanese scientists, for their discoveries in the world of subatomic particles.
When Nambu learned he had won, he was shocked.
"My wife didn't believe it for 30 minutes," he said.
Nambu won half of the prize for the discovery of a mechanism called spontaneous broken symmetry. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa of Japan shared the other half of the prize for discovering the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.
He spent the entire morning on the telephone at his Hyde Park residence, receiving congratulations from colleagues around the world.
Nambu's colleagues and students at the U. of C. gave him a standing ovation.
Professor James Cronin, himself a Nobel laureate in physics said Nambu's award was long overdue.
"It has been clear for so many years that of all the people who've won the Nobel prize there's been one missing. That is Professor Yoichiro Nambu," Cronin said.
Many thought Nambu could have won the Nobel prize anytime over the last 30 years.
"I did not expect it at this particular time...I was very surprised when I got the news," Nambu said.
He tried to explain spontaneous broken symmetry in layman's terms.
"Symmetry is one of the fundamental concepts in physics," Nambu said, "but sometimes symmetry is broken."
Another university employee, Denise Wyler, tried to break down the theory.
"In nature, most things are symmetrical; bilateral, like people – two hands two feet," Wyler said, "and this is the study of things that are not."
In its citation, the academy said that this "year's Nobel laureates in physics have presented theoretical insights that give us a deeper understanding of what happens far inside the tiniest building blocks of matter."
Turning to Nambu, it said that his work in "Spontaneous broken symmetry conceals nature's order under an apparently jumbled surface," the academy said in its citation. "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."
The so-called Standard Model is the theory that governs physics at the microscopic scale. It accounts for the behavior of three out of nature's four fundamental forces -- electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force.
Gravity, the fourth force, has not yet been incorporated into the model.
Nambu was born in Tokyo, and came to the United States in 1952. He first came to the U. of C. two years later, and became a professor there in 1958. He became a U.S. citizen in 1970.
In 1977, Nambu was named the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor at the U. of C., and he was chairman of physics from 1974 until 1977. He retired in 1991.
For the work on spontaneous broken symmetry Nambu did his research at the Enrico Fermi Institute, and is now one of 82 celebrated U. of C. Nobel laureates. The U. of C. has more Nobel laureates than any other American university.
The university's president says the culture there emphasizes originality and productivity.
Robert Zimmer, president "It's a very, very intense environment," President Robert Zimmer said. "People come here, then work exceedingly hard. It's a challenging environment."
Kobayashi, 64, works for the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, or KEK, in Tsukuba, Japan. Maskawa, 68, is a physics professor at Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto, who also teaches at Nagoya University in his hometown in central Japan.
The trio will share the $1.4 million purse, a diploma and an invitation to the prize ceremonies in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
CBS 2's Joanie Lum and Jim Williams and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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