The Nishina Memorial Prize (仁科記念賞, Nishina Kinenshō) is the oldest and most prestigious physics award in Japan.
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Since 1955, the Nishina Memorial Prize has been awarded annually by the Nishina Memorial Foundation. The Foundation was established to commemorate Yoshio Nishina, who was the founding father of modern physics research in Japan and a mentor of the first two Japanese Nobel Laureates, Hideki Yukawa and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. The Prize, of ¥500,000 (about US$5,000) and the certificate, is bestowed upon young scientists who have made substantial contributions in the field of atomic and sub-atomic physics research. As of 2024, six Nobel Prizes have been awarded to prior Nishina recipients: Leo Esaki, Makoto Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa, Masatoshi Koshiba, Shuji Nakamura and Takaaki Kajita.
Laureates Notable Nishina laureates are:
1955: Kazuhiko Nishijima 1957: Ryogo Kubo (1977 Boltzmann Medal) 1959: Leo Esaki (1973 Nobel Prize, 1998 Japan Prize) 1961: Takeo Matsubara 1963: Chushiro Hayashi 1968: Jun Kondo 1969: Hisashi Matsuda, Hiroyuki Ikezi, Kyoji Nishikawa 1971: Hirotaka Sugawara 1972: Kyozi Kawasaki (2001 Boltzmann Medal), Kazumi Maki 1973: Fumitaka Sato 1974: Bunji Sakita 1976: Susumu Okubo (2006 Wigner Medal) 1978: Akito Arima 1979: Makoto Kobayashi (2008 Nobel Prize), Toshihide Maskawa (2008 Nobel Prize) 1982: Akira Tonomura (1998 Benjamin Franklin Medal) 1984: Tohru Eguchi 1985: Yasuo Tanaka, Sumio Iijima (2008 Kavli Prize) 1987: Masatoshi Koshiba (2002 Nobel Prize), Yoji Totsuka (2007 Benjamin Franklin Medal), Norio Kaifu 1989: Ken'ichi Nomoto (2019 Hans A. Bethe Prize) 1990: Yoshinori Tokura, Katsuhiko Sato 1992: Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Tsutomu Yanagida 1996: Shuji Nakamura (2002 Benjamin Franklin Medal, 2008 Prince of Asturias Award, 2014 Nobel Prize) 1997: Anthony Ichiro Sanda 1999: Kenzo Inoue, Akira Kakuto, Takaaki Kajita (2015 Nobel Prize), Yasunobu Nakamura 2001: Yōichirō Suzuki 2002: Seigo Tarucha 2003: Atsuto Suzuki 2004: Jaw-Shen Tsai 2005: Kōsuke Morita, Kōichirō Nishikawa 2006: Toshiki Tajima 2009: Hirosi Ooguri 2012: Hideo Hosono 2013: Hidetoshi Katori, Yoshiro Takahashi, Takahiko Kondo, Tomio Kobayashi, Shoji Asai 2014: Yuji Matsuda, Takashi Kobayashi, Tsuyoshi Nakaya 2015: Shinsei Ryu, Akira Furusaki, Tohru Motobayashi, Hiroyoshi Sakurai 2016: Tadashi Takayanagi 2017: Hiroki Takesue, Chihaya Adachi, Mahito Kohmoto 2018: Masaru Shibata, Koichiro Tanaka 2019: Yoshihiro Iwasa, Shigeru Yoshida, Aya Ishihara 2020: Kazushi Kanoda, Kazuma Nakazawa 2021: Takahisa Arima, Tsuyoshi Kimura, Masato Takita, Satoshi Miyazaki 2022 Eiji Saitoh, Eiichiro Komatsu 2023 Atsuko Ichikawa
Nishina Asia Award In 2012, the foundation established a parallel prize called the Nishina Asia Award. This prize was meant for "outstanding achievement by young Asian scientists" (outside Japan) in fundamental physics. The prize was given to one physicist each year.
2013: Shiraz Minwalla 2014: Yuanbo Zhang 2015: Ke He 2016: Seok Kim 2017: Hongming Wen 2018: Yu-tin Huang 2019: Chao-Yang Lu 2020: Ying Jiang 2021: Wang Yao 2022: Suvrat Raju
See also List of physics awards
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