Top �� What's up around the Prime Minister �� October, 2002

Prime Minister Meets with Nobel Laureates Friday, October 11, 2002 Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi invited Masatoshi Koshiba and Koichi Tanaka, who won Nobel Prizes this year, to the Prime Minister's Official Residence and had talks with them. Masatoshi Koshiba, who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, was the first to successfully observe neutrinos emitted from supernovas and to provide evidence of the mechanism through which supernovas explode as a result of gravitational collapse, and the first to provide support for the theory of stellar evolution. Koichi Tanaka, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, devised the soft laser desorption method, a new ionization method used in the development of mass spectroscopy which made it possible to analyze biological macromolecules. Their selection as Nobel Prize winners reflects the high esteem in which their work is held. During the meeting, Prime Minister Koizumi congratulated the two and posed for a commemorative photograph with them.