Akito Arima, KBE (有馬 朗人, Arima Akito, 13 September 1930 – 7 December 2020) was a Japanese nuclear physicist, politician, and haiku poet, known for the interacting boson model.[1][2][3][4]

Akito Arima
Arima in 2011
Born(1930-09-13)September 13, 1930
DiedDecember 7, 2020(2020-12-07) (aged 90)
NationalityJapanese
Alma materUniversity of Tokyo
Known forInteracting boson model
AwardsNishina Memorial Prize
Humboldt Prize
John Price Wetherill Medal
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Japan Academy Prize
Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics
Legion of Honour
Order of the British Empire (KBE)
Person of Cultural Merit
Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun
Order of Culture
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Tokyo
Argonne National Laboratory
Rutgers University
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Hosei University
RIKEN

Early life and career

edit

Arima was born 1930 in Osaka. He studied at the University of Tokyo, where he received his doctorate in 1958. He became a research associate at the Institute for Nuclear Studies in 1956.

Arima became a lecturer in 1960, and an associate professor at the Department of Physics in 1964 at the University of Tokyo. He was promoted to a full professor in 1975. He was president of the University of Tokyo during 1989–1993. In 1993, he moved to Hosei University. Since 1993, he has been scientific adviser of the Ministry of Education and from 1993 to 1998 president of RIKEN.[5][6]

He was a visiting professor at Rutgers University, New Jersey (1967–1968), and a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1971–1973). In 1974, he founded the interacting boson model with Francesco Iachello.

In 1998 he entered the Diet of Japan as a member of the House of Councillors for the Liberal Democratic Party. He was Minister of Education until 1999 under the government of Keizo Obuchi. After the cabinet reshuffle in 1999, he served as Director of the Science Museum. From 2000 he was chairman of the Japan Science Foundation.

Arima has served as the Chancellor of Musashi Academy of the Nezu Foundation since 2006.[7][8]

Death

edit

Arima died from heart failure on December 7, 2020, at the age of 90.[9] He was posthumously promoted to the court rank of Senior Third Rank (shosanmi or ōkimi no tsunokurai), which is usually awarded to high-ranking politicians and prominent scholars in post-war Japan.[10]

Awards and honors

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ Arima, Iachello Collective nuclear states as representations of a SU(6) Group, Physical Review Letters 35, 1069–1072 (1975).
  2. ^ Arima, Iachello The interacting boson model, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  3. ^ Arima, Iachello Interacting boson model of collective states, Part 1 (the vibrational limit) Annals of Physics 99, 253-317 (1976), Part 2 (the rotational limit) ibid. 111, 201-238 (1978), Part 3 (the transition from SU (5) to SU (3)), ibid. 115, 325-366 (1978), Part 4 (the O(6) limit) ibid. 123, 468-492 (1979).
  4. ^ Arima, A.; Iachello, F. (1981). "The Interacting Boson Model". Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. 31: 75–105. Bibcode:1981ARNPS..31...75A. doi:10.1146/annurev.ns.31.120181.000451.
  5. ^ Biography, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
  6. ^ Curriculum Vitae Archived 2017-11-18 at the Wayback Machine, Japan Science and Technology Agency.
  7. ^ 有馬朗人, Akito Arima - Japanese Wikipedia Entry
  8. ^ [1], Musashi University Website
  9. ^ 有馬朗人氏死去 元東大学長・文相、90歳 (in Japanese)
  10. ^ 『官報』令和3年1月13日 第410号 7頁
  11. ^ Arima Einstein's Century: Akito Arima's Haiku, Brooks Books, 2001.
  12. ^ "KVI - Center for Advanced Radiation Technology - History". University of Groningen. 29 March 2019. Archived from the original on 26 July 2017.
  13. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 May 2011. Retrieved 22 April 2011.
edit
Academic offices
Preceded by President of University of Tokyo
April 1989 – March 1993
Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Minister of Education
1998–1999
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Yutaka Takeyama
Director-General of the Science and Technology Agency
1999
Succeeded by