Nishina Memorial Prize
The Nishina Memorial Prize is the oldest and most prestigious physics award in Japan.
Information
Since 1955, the Nishina Memorial Prize has been awarded annually by the Nishina Memorial Foundation. The Foundation was established to commemorate Yoshio Nishina, who was the founding father of modern physics research in Japan and a mentor of the first two Japanese Nobel Laureates, Hideki Yukawa and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga.The Prize, of ¥500,000 and the certificate, is bestowed upon young scientists who have made substantial contributions in the field of atomic and sub-atomic physics research. As of 2024, six Nobel Prizes have been awarded to prior Nishina recipients: Leo Esaki, Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa, Masatoshi Koshiba, Shuji Nakamura and Takaaki Kajita.
Laureates
Notable Nishina laureates are:- 1955: Kazuhiko Nishijima
- 1957: Ryogo Kubo
- 1959: Leo Esaki
- 1961: Takeo Matsubara
- 1963: Chushiro Hayashi
- 1968: Jun Kondo
- 1969: Hisashi Matsuda, Hiroyuki Ikezi, Kyoji Nishikawa
- 1971: Hirotaka Sugawara
- 1972: Kyozi Kawasaki, Kazumi Maki
- 1973: Fumitaka Sato
- 1974: Bunji Sakita
- 1976: Susumu Okubo
- 1978: Akito Arima
- 1979: Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa
- 1982: Akira Tonomura
- 1984: Tohru Eguchi
- 1985: Yasuo Tanaka, Sumio Iijima
- 1987: Masatoshi Koshiba, Yoji Totsuka, Norio Kaifu
- 1989: Ken'ichi Nomoto
- 1990: Yoshinori Tokura, Katsuhiko Sato
- 1992: Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Tsutomu Yanagida
- 1996: Shuji Nakamura
- 1997: Anthony Ichiro Sanda
- 1999: Kenzo Inoue, Akira Kakuto, Takaaki Kajita, Yasunobu Nakamura
- 2001: Yōichirō Suzuki
- 2002: Seigo Tarucha
- 2003: Atsuto Suzuki
- 2004: Jaw-Shen Tsai
- 2005: Kōsuke Morita, Kōichirō Nishikawa
- 2006: Toshiki Tajima
- 2009: Hirosi Ooguri
- 2012: Hideo Hosono
- 2013: Hidetoshi Katori, Yoshiro Takahashi, Takahiko Kondo, Tomio Kobayashi, Shoji Asai
- 2014: Yuji Matsuda, Takashi Kobayashi, Tsuyoshi Nakaya
- 2015: Shinsei Ryu, Akira Furusaki, Tohru Motobayashi, Hiroyoshi Sakurai
- 2016: Tadashi Takayanagi
- 2017: Hiroki Takesue, Chihaya Adachi, Mahito Kohmoto
- 2018: Masaru Shibata, Koichiro Tanaka
- 2019: Yoshihiro Iwasa, Shigeru Yoshida, Aya Ishihara
- 2020: Kazushi Kanoda, Kazuma Nakazawa
- 2021: Takahisa Arima, Tsuyoshi Kimura, Masato Takita, Satoshi Miyazaki
- 2022 Eiji Saitoh, Eiichiro Komatsu
- 2023 Atsuko Ichikawa
Nishina Asia Award
In 2012, the foundation established a parallel prize called the Nishina Asia Award. This prize was meant for "outstanding achievement by young Asian scientists" in fundamental physics. The prize was given to one physicist each year.- 2013: Shiraz Minwalla
- 2014: Yuanbo Zhang
- 2015: Ke He
- 2016: Seok Kim
- 2017: Hongming Wen
- 2018: Yu-tin Huang
- 2019: Chao-Yang Lu
- 2020: Ying Jiang
- 2021: Wang Yao
- 2022: Suvrat Raju