Hideki Yukawa and Sin-itiro Tomonaga, who are the first and second Nobel prize laureates in Japan, were born on January 23, 1907 and on March 31, 1906, respectively. They were classmates at Kyoto University as well as at high school. Kyoto University has decided to celebrate centennial of their birth throughout the academic year 2006-2007 (2006 April to 2007 March).
As is well known, Prof. Yukawa predicted the existence of the pi-meson as the origin of strong force and hence created a new field of physics, the elementary particle physics. Prof. Tomonaga developed the renormalization theory in QED and made numerous invaluable contributions to the developments in particle physics and solid state physics. At this occasion of their centennial, we would like to review the developments in modern physics pioneered by them, discuss the present status of various areas in physics, and provide a future perspective on fundamental physics in the 21st century.
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