Four Japanese Scientists Win Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry

Embassy of Japan

October10, 2008

  Four Japanese scientists (including one Japanese-born U.S. citizen) have won 2008 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, bringing the total number of Japanese Nobel laureates in the natural science fields to twelve. Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago, Makoto Kobayashi of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Ibaraki and Toshihide Matsuzawa of Kyoto Sangyo University were awarded the prize for their revolutionary work in the field of subatomic physics. Osamu Shimomura and two American researchers shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP), which is used to track the development of brain cells and the spread of cancer cells. This year’s Nobel achievements, along with three prizes awarded for physics and chemistry in 2001 and 2002, put Japan on track to meet its government’s goal of producing thirty Nobel laureates in the natural science fields in the first half of the 21st century.

http://nobelprize.org/

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