Makoto Kobayashi

Makoto Kobayashi (born 1944) is a Japanese particle physicist known for his work on CP violation. Born in Nagoya, he graduated from Nagoya University in 1967 and took his doctorate there in 1972, then worked at Kyoto University and later at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, KEK, where he became head of the Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies. With his colleague Toshihide Maskawa he showed in 1973 that CP violation in the Standard Model required at least three generations of quarks, a prediction confirmed a few years later by the discovery of the bottom quark. Their paper became one of the most cited in high energy physics, and the mixing matrix it describes carries both their names along with Cabibbo. Kobayashi and Maskawa shared half of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics, the other half going to Yoichiro Nambu.