Hideki Yukawa (23.01.1907-08.11.1981) was a Japanese theoretical physicist and a member of the Japan Academy (1946). He was born in Tokyo. He graduated from the University of Kyoto (1929). In 1932-33 he taught there, in 1933 — 39 he was at the University of Osaka, in 1939 — 70 professor at the University of Kyoto, and in 1953 —70 director of the university's Institute of Fundamental Physics.
His research was in quantum mechanics, nuclear and meson physics, and the theory of elementary particles. Extending the idea of I. E. Tamm and D. D. Ivanenko that nuclear forces arise from an exchange, he put forward in 1935 the hypothesis of particles with a mass of about 200 electron masses (the so-called mesons), responsible for carrying the nuclear interaction between nucleons in the nucleus (Nobel Prize, 1949). The particles Yukawa predicted (pi-mesons) were detected experimentally in 1947. He developed the main principles of meson theory, and in particular obtained the mathematical expression for the interaction of nucleons (the Yukawa potential). Together with S. Sakata he predicted K-capture in 1935; in 1938 he constructed a scalar theory of nuclear forces, and to explain the charge independence of nuclear forces he introduced a neutral meson. In 1953 he put forward the idea of the intermediate boson.
A member of a number of academies of sciences, and in particular a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1966). He created a school of theoretical physics (S. Sakata, M. Taketani, M. Kobayashi and others). He founded the journal “Progress of Theoretical Physics”. He took part in the scientists' movement against the nuclear threat and for the prohibition of atomic and hydrogen weapons.