Masatoshi Koshiba

Masatoshi Koshiba was a Japanese physicist who lived from 1926 to 2020, one of the founders of neutrino astronomy, whose work with the Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande detectors enabled detection of solar neutrinos and, in 1987, observation of neutrinos from the supernova SN 1987A. He held positions at the University of Chicago, the University of Tokyo and Tokai University, serving as professor and later professor emeritus at Tokyo. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002, shared with Raymond Davis Jr. and Riccardo Giacconi, for pioneering contributions to astrophysics including the detection of cosmic neutrinos, and received Japan own Order of Culture in 1997. He received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2000.