Yoichiro Nambu

Nambu, 2008 Nobel laureate in physics, has revolutionized modern scientific ideas about the nature of the most fundamental particles and the space through which they move. His theories form an essential cornerstone of what physicists call the Standard Model, which explains in a unified way three of the four fundamental forces of nature: strong, weak and electromagnetic. He also has significantly influenced the development of quantum chromodynamics, a theory that describes certain interactions between quarks and between protons and neutrons. His many awards include the National Medal of Science, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, the Wolf Prize in physics, the J. Robert Oppenheimer Prize and the Max Planck Medal.