R.S. Hayano wins the
Nishina Memorial Prize

Ryu Hayano, editor of Elsevier journal Nuclear Physics A, will be awarded the Nishina Memorial Prize on the 5th of December in Tokyo. The prize is the most prestigious Physics award in Japan, awarded to those who have achieved excellent result in physics.

Elsevier would like to congratulate Ryu Hayano with this very special achievement.

The prize will be awarded for his work on high resolution spectroscopy of antiprotonic helium carried out at CERN. This work has led, among other things, to a measurement of the antiproton-electron mass ratio to two parts in a billion. Hayano is also spokesman of the ASACUSA experiment at CERN.

Yoshio Nishina (1890 – 1951) was a Japanese physicist. He originated the study of nuclear physics in Japan and trained many young Japanese scientists in that field. In Copenhagen, he was an associate of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. He wrote a paper on incoherent or Compton scattering with Oskar Klein in 1928, from which the Klein-Nishina formula derives.

After his death in 1951 the Nishina Memorial Foundation was founded with the objective to promote physics in Japan, encouraging young and talented scientists and encouraging exchange  of  science  and  culture between Japan and other countries, in order to commemorate the great scholar. In 1955 the Nishina Memorial prize was awarded for the first time.

Previous winners include Nobel Prize winners: Esaki, Koshiba, Kobayashi and Maskawa.