Tsutomu Yanagida


Tsutomu Yanagida is a Japanese physicist who first proposed the seesaw mechanism and developed the model of leptogenesis.

Career

Tsutomu Yanagida received a PhD in physics at Hiroshima University in 1977.. In 1979, he proposed the seesaw mechanism, that explains the mass of neutrinos by introduction heavy right-handed neutrinos. Together with M. Fukugita, he developed the model of leptogenesis that traces the baryon asymmetry back to a lepton asymmetry. Till 2019 he was professor at Kavli Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at Tokio University. Some of his students in Tokio were Yasunori Nomura, Junji Hisano and Takeo Moroi. In 2019, he was appointed professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research includes theoretical particle physics, string theory and cosmology. Yanagida works on super symmetry, inflation and the baryon asymmetry. He is corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg. In 2017 he visited the Higgs Center of Theoretical Physics at Edinburgh University as guest scientist.

Honours