Kobayashi, Makoto, 1944–, Japanese physicist, Ph.D. Kyoto Univ., 1972. Kobayashi taught at Kyoto Univ. (1972–79) and the National Laboratory of High Energy Physics, Tsukuba, Japan (1979–97). He has been a professor at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, Tsukuba, since 1997. In 2008 Kobayashi shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Yoichiro Nambu and Toshihide Maskawa for his work on quarks (see elementary particles). He and Maskawa predicted the existence of at least three families of quarks, the subatomic particles that are the constituents of protons and neutrons, and thereby provided the foundation for the principle of broken symmetry. The quarks Kobayashi and Maskawa predicted in 1972 have since been confirmed experimentally.
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