Archive of historical materials
Draft of Yukawa’s first paper: On the Interaction of Elementary Particles. I.
OU1934-A5 (16 pages) Date: November 1, 1934
This is the handwritten draft of Yukawa’s historical paper that led to his reception of the Nobel Prize.
Yukawa had not published any paper before then. In 1933, Yukawa began working at Osaka Imperial University and tackled the challenge of elucidating the mystery of nuclear forces while Seishi Kikuchi and other prominent researchers were producing achievements in nuclear physics and quantum physics. The idea of γ’ (gamma prime) that Yukawa came up with in early October led to the discovery of a new particle (meson) that mediates nuclear forces. The idea of introducing a new particle for the purpose of explaining the forces that act between particles was revolutionary at that time. Yukawa estimated the mass of the new particle and the degree of its force. No other physicists in the world had thought of this idea before.
Yukawa wrote the draft of the paper on the sheets of notepaper printed with “Department of Physics, Osaka Imperial University”. This notepaper was used preferably by Yukawa. Yukawa’s cursive English handwriting is beautiful and graceful.
In the ending part (pages 15 and 16) of the paper, Yukawa concluded that the interactions of elementary particles could be explained by postulating the existence of a charged bose particle (quantum) which mediates much stronger interactions between elementary particles than the electron. He also pointed out that the new particle might be observed in cosmic rays. However, Yukawa admitted that his conclusion was written at the stage of hypothesis. Yukawa was a strict and modest scientist. (Written by Yutaka Hosotani)
