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Yoshitaka Mimura | |
|---|---|
三村 剛昂 | |
| Born | March 1, 1898 Takehara, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan |
| Died | October 26, 1965 (aged 67) |
| Alma mater | Tokyo Imperial University |
| Known for | Wave geometry Founding director of the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Workplaces | Hiroshima Higher Normal School Hiroshima University of Literature and Science Hiroshima University |
Yoshitaka Mimura (Japanese: 三村 剛昂, 1 March 1898 – 26 October 1965), who published under the romanisation Yositaka Mimura, was a Japanese theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of Hiroshima University. He led the wave geometry programme, a pre-war Japanese attempt to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics, and was the founding director of the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics at Hiroshima University of Literature and Science — the first research institute for theoretical physics in Japan.[1][2] The institute was destroyed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, in which Mimura was injured and three of his colleagues were killed.[3] As a hibakusha, he later opposed nuclear research within the Science Council of Japan and took part in the Kyoto Conference of Scientists.[4]
Early life and education
[edit]Mimura was born on 1 March 1898 in Takehara, Hiroshima Prefecture.[3] After attending the First Higher School, he entered the physics department of Tokyo Imperial University in September 1918, studying alongside Yoshio Nishina and the astronomer Yusuke Hagihara under Hantaro Nagaoka, and graduated in March 1921.[1]
He had planned to study in Germany at his own expense immediately after graduation, but took up a post at Hiroshima Higher Normal School at Nagaoka's insistence. The destruction of his father's timber business in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake ended the plan, and Mimura never travelled abroad.[1]
Career
[edit]Mimura became a lecturer and later professor at Hiroshima Higher Normal School. When Hiroshima University of Literature and Science was founded in 1929 he was appointed assistant professor there, becoming full professor in 1937.[3][1] His first collaborator was Minoshichi Sukegawa, with whom he worked on the new quantum theory and co-authored physics textbooks until Sukegawa's death in an aircraft accident in 1932.[1]
Wave geometry
[edit]In October 1934 Mimura began a collaboration with the mathematician Toranosuke Iwatsuki (1894–1945) on what became known as wave geometry, a unified field theory intended to encompass both relativity and quantum theory.[1][4] Taking as its model Paul Dirac's linearisation of the wave equation, the programme treated the space-time interval as an operator acting on a wave function, so that a linearised matrix metric replaced the quadratic metric of Riemannian geometry. The resulting theory geometrised the laws of physics to the extent that it required no variational principle.[1]
The first paper appeared in February 1935 in the Journal of Science of the Hiroshima University. Nature reported on the programme in December 1935, 1937 and 1938, describing an energetic school of mathematical physics at Hiroshima and noting that by 1937 the series had reached fifteen memoirs.[5] The group grew to roughly ten physicists and mathematicians and published more than sixty original papers over a decade, and was referred to as the "Hiroshima school".[1] Its results were collected in the monograph Wave Geometry, written with Hyōichirō Takeno and published in 1962.[2]
Research Institute for Theoretical Physics
[edit]Mimura petitioned the Ministry of Education for years to establish a dedicated institute. An imperial ordinance of 23 August 1944 created the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics attached to Hiroshima University of Literature and Science, with the stated purpose of comprehensive research into the foundations of physics; Mimura became its first director. It was the first institute in Japan devoted to theoretical physics, and was housed in the Eikaikaku building.[1][2]
On 3 February 1945 the Chugoku Shimbun published a round-table discussion on "scientific warfare" in which Mimura, as the local authority on physics, said that developing an atomic bomb would be exceedingly difficult, while acknowledging the immense destructive energy contained in the atom.[3]
Six months later, on 6 August 1945, the institute — about 1.6 km from the hypocentre — was destroyed by the atomic bomb. Three members of the institute were killed, among them Iwatsuki, and Mimura suffered head injuries.[3][2]
Postwar activity
[edit]After the war the institute was temporarily housed at the university's marine biological station at Mukaishima. In March 1948 it moved to Takehara, Mimura's birthplace, on land and in a building donated by the town. When Hiroshima University of Literature and Science was absorbed into the newly founded Hiroshima University in 1949, the institute became an attached institute of that university. Mimura remained director until his retirement in March 1961.[4][2] The institute was merged into the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University in 1990.[2]
Mimura was a member of the Research Council of Japan before the war and of the Science Council of Japan afterwards, and helped to establish the council's committee on theoretical physics.[1] In October 1952 he was among those who opposed the "Kaya–Fushimi proposal" to begin nuclear research in Japan, arguing that such research should be deferred until it was certain that nuclear energy worldwide would be confined to peaceful use. He signed the statements of the first and second Kyoto Conference of Scientists and chaired the second.[4]
He died on 26 October 1965, aged 67.[1]
Legacy
[edit]Wave geometry attracted little attention in later histories of Japanese physics, overshadowed by Hideki Yukawa's meson theory, which was conceived in the same month that the Hiroshima programme began.[1]
In 2008 the Cambridge theoretical physicist Paul Townsend published "From wave geometry to fake supergravity", observing that the central equation of the pre-war Hiroshima programme, (Dμ + Mμ)κ = 0, is also the key equation of the modern "fake supergravity" programme. In present-day terminology the spinors Mimura's group sought to classify are Killing spinors, the objects whose solutions characterise supersymmetric backgrounds in supergravity and string theory. Townsend's paper opens by citing the 1962 Wave Geometry monograph.[6]
An exhibition marking the seventieth anniversary of the bombing, "Yoshitaka Mimura and the Hiroshima University Research Institute for Theoretical Physics", was held in Hiroshima in 2015, with an accompanying lecture by Kazuo Fujikawa, the institute's last director.[7]
Selected publications
[edit]- Mimura, Yoshitaka; Sukegawa, Minoshichi (1933). Atomic Physics. Tokyo: Chūbunkan. (in Japanese)
- Mimura, Yoshitaka; Sukegawa, Minoshichi (1935). Mechanics. Tokyo: Chūbunkan. (in Japanese)
- Mimura, Yositaka; Takeno, Hyōichirō (1962). Wave Geometry. Scientific Reports of the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, Hiroshima University, No. 2.
- Mimura, Yositaka; Takeno, Hyōichirō; Sakuma, Kiyoshi; Ueno, Yoshio (1967). Wave Geometry II. Scientific Reports of the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, Hiroshima University, No. 6.
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Satomi, Shirō (2001). 三村剛昂の研究と教育 ―広島県竹原に生まれた理論物理学研究所の創立者― [The research and teaching of Yoshitaka Mimura: founder of the Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, born in Takehara, Hiroshima]. Physics Education in University (in Japanese). 2001 (1). Physical Society of Japan: 2, 12–16. doi:10.11316/peu.2001.1.0_2_12.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, Hiroshima University" (in Japanese). Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University. 27 February 2017. Retrieved 13 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Mizukawa, Kyosuke. "Documenting Hiroshima of 1945: Mid-September, devastated physics research laboratory". Chugoku Shimbun / Hiroshima Peace Media Center. Retrieved 13 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 "Yukawa and Mimura" (in Japanese). Yukawa Memorial Hall Archives, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University. Retrieved 13 September 2026.
- ↑ "Hirosima Wave Geometry and Field Theory". Nature. 139 (3525): 893. 1937. Bibcode:1937Natur.139R.893.. doi:10.1038/139893b0.
- ↑ Townsend, Paul K. (2008). "From wave geometry to fake supergravity". Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. 41 (30) 304014. arXiv:0710.5709. Bibcode:2008JPhA...41D4014T. doi:10.1088/1751-8113/41/30/304014.
- ↑ "Exhibition "Yoshitaka Mimura and the Hiroshima University Research Institute for Theoretical Physics"" (in Japanese). Hiroshima University. 23 July 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2026.
External links
[edit]- Research Institute for Theoretical Physics, Hiroshima University — Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (in Japanese)
Category:1898 births Category:1965 deaths Category:20th-century Japanese physicists Category:Japanese theoretical physicists Category:University of Tokyo alumni Category:Academic staff of Hiroshima University Category:People from Hiroshima Prefecture Category:Hibakusha