Hantaro Nagaoka (18.08.1865-11.12.1950) was a Japanese physicist and a member of the Japan Academy, of which he was president in 1939 — 48. He was born in Nagasaki. He graduated from the University of Tokyo (1887) and worked there until 1926 (from 1896 as professor and from 1916 as director of the Institute of Physics at the university). In 1917 — 46 he also worked at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Tokyo), in 1920 — 39 he headed the physics department of the National Research Council of Japan, and in 1931 —34 he was president of the university in Osaka.
His research concerned magnetism, atomic and nuclear physics, optics, spectroscopy, mathematical physics and geophysics. In 1904 he proposed a model of the atom according to which the atom consists of a positively charged nucleus around which a ring containing the electrons revolves (the “Saturn-type atom”). However, Nagaoka's model did not attract the attention of physicists, although to a certain extent it can be regarded as a precursor of Rutherford's nuclear model.
He was the founder of Japanese physics and of a scientific school (K. Honda, J. Ishihara, S. Nishikawa, Y. Nishina and others). A foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1930).