Unknown Japanese Company Contributed 3 Nobel Prize Laureates

This episode has to do with a Japanese corporation, rather little known at home and abroad, that "manufactured" three Nobel prize laureates.

Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. is an electronic parts manufacturer operating in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, otherwise called HamaPhoto.

First, HamaPhoto developed the photomultiplier (OM) used in the neutrino detector, Kamiokande, in Kamioka, Gifu Prefecture supervised and constructed by Nobel prize laureate Masatoshi Koshiba.

Second, the company produced the solid-state detectors for Mr. Peter Ware Higgs to win his Nobel prize in 2013.

And thirdly, HamaPhoto was behind Mr. Takaaki Kajita of the Institute of Cosmic Ray Research in his research that won him Nobel Prize in Physics.

Super-Kamioka Nucleon Decay Experiments, in short Super-K, is the facilities that proved the mass of neutrino, and HamaPhoto is responsible for the photodetector which constitutes the "eyeball" of the facilities. HamaPhoto's homepage tells a full story of how the photodetector was developed.

Mr. Koshiba supervised the construction of an elementary particles observation device, Kamiokande, to stage his observation of neutrino in nature for the first time in history. Mr. Kajita is his student.

Koshiba first used US made photoelectron multiplier tubes but could not obtain results he had anticipated. He then asked HamaPhoto to build him multiplier tubes of 20 inches in diameter. HamaPhoto managed to mass produce the kind of tubes Koshiba needed. Multiplier tubes of that diameter had never been produced elsewhere.

HamaPhoto contributed to Koshiba's neutrino observation and soared its own repute worldwide. The company receives ever since inquiries from cutting-edge research laboratories from all over the world.

The discovery of Higgs particle owes much to HamaPhoto's optical technique as does the large hadron collider (LHC) of CERN. In honor of HamaPhoto's contributions, a plate engraving its name is placed in the front entrance of CERN.

News Source: Business Journal