Nobel Prize in Physics, 2008

Nobel Prize® Medal for Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 awarded Yoichiro Nambu, "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature".

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in physics takes place when a system that is symmetric with respect to some symmetry group goes into a vacuum state that is not symmetric. At this point the system no longer appears to behave in a symmetric manner. It is a phenomenon that naturally occurs in many situations. The symmetry group can be discrete, such as the space group of a crystal, or continuous (e.g. a Lie group), such as the rotational symmetry of space.

Yoichiro Nambu

Yoichiro Nambu (1921–) is a Japanese-born American physicist. He is famous for having proposed the "color charge" of quantum chromodynamics, for having done early work on spontaneous symmetry breaking in particle physics, and for having discovered that the dual resonance model could be explained as a quantum mechanical theory of strings. He is accounted as one of the founders of string theory. He has won numerous honors and awards including the J. Robert Oppenheimer Prize, the U.S.'s National Medal of Science, Japan's Order of Culture, the Planck Medal, the Wolf Prize, the Franklin Institute's Franklin Medal, the Dirac Medal and the Sakurai Prize. He was awarded one-half of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics".

Makoto Kobayashi

Makoto Kobayashi (小林誠) is a Japanese physicist well-known for his work on CP-violation. His article "CP Violation in the Renormalizable Theory of Weak Interaction" (1973) written with Toshihide Maskawa is the third most cited high energy physics paper of all time as of 2007. The CKM Matrix, which defines the mixing parameters between quarks was the result of this work. He and Toshihide Maskawa were jointly awarded 1/4 of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.

Toshihide Maskawa

Toshihide Maskawa (or Masukawa) (益川敏英, Maskawa Toshihide, born February 7, 1940) is a Japanese theoretical physicist well-known for his work on CP-violation. His article "CP Violation in the Renormalizable Theory of Weak Interaction" written with Makoto Kobayashi is the third most cited high energy physics paper of all time as of 2006. The Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix, which defines the mixing parameters between quarks, was the result of this work. He shared one-half of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics with Makoto Kobayashi. (Wikipedia)

Nicolae Sfetcu