Press Release

7 October 2008

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2008 with one half to

Yoichiro Nambu
Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, IL, USA

"for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics"

and the other half jointly to

Makoto Kobayashi, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan

and

Toshihide Maskawa, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, and Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan

"for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature"

Yoichiro Nambu, US citizen. Born 1921 in Tokyo, Japan. D.Sc. 1952 at University of Tokyo, Japan. Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, IL, USA.
http://physics.uchicago.edu/research/areas/particle_t.html#Nambu

Makoto Kobayashi, Japanese citizen. Born 1944 in Nagoya, Japan. Ph.D. 1972 at Nagoya University, Japan. Professor Emeritus at High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan.
www.kek.jp/intra-e/press/2007/EPSprize2_e.html

Toshihide Maskawa, Japanese citizen. Born 1940. Ph.D. 1967 at Nagoya University, Japan. Professor Emeritus at Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, and Professor at Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan.
www.yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/english

Prize amount: SEK 10 million. Nambu receives one half and Kobayashi and Maskawa share the other half.