Yoshiki Kuramoto

Yoshiki Kuramoto (born 1940) is a Japanese physicist who spent his career at Kyoto University working on nonlinear dynamics and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. He is known for the Kuramoto model, a solvable model of synchronisation in populations of coupled oscillators, and for the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation, regarded as the first example of spatiotemporal chaos. He also helped derive the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation in reaction-diffusion systems and discovered chimera states in networks of coupled oscillators. Born in Osaka, he graduated from Kyoto University in 1964, took his doctorate there in 1970, became professor in 1985 and retired as emeritus professor in 2004. His book Chemical Oscillations, Waves, and Turbulence is among the most cited works in nonlinear dynamics, and he received the Asahi Prize in 2005.