Ryogo Kubo in his formative years as a physicist
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Ryogo Kubo in his formative years as a physicist Hiroto Kono1,2,a 1 2
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama 2-12-1, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Kojimachi 5-3-1, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0083, Japan Received 17 January 2020 / Accepted 21 July 2020 Published online 16 September 2020 c EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany,
part of Springer Nature, 2020 Abstract. The Japanese theoretical physicist Ryogo Kubo made remarkable contributions to statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics, amongst which his name is most widely associated with the linear response theory. Despite his importance in the history of modern physics, however, historians have paid him little attention. Using his unpublished manuscripts in a newly organized archive, this paper examines his studies and research up to the end of World War II. Influenced by his brother Masaji Kubo, a physical chemist, and the milieu at Tokyo Imperial University, he became interested in theoretical approaches to properties of matter and worked on dipolar gases and resistance in metals. After graduation, he studied three different phenomena—relaxation, melting, and rubber elasticity—by applying the method of eigenvalue problems. He was also involved in wartime research on noctovision and worked on photoemission in semiconductors. This paper also identifies two distinct focuses in his early research that persisted in his work after the war: solid-state physics and statistical mechanics in today’s terminology. Reconstructing Kubo’s formative years is instrumental for constructing a historiography of a key aspect of modern Japanese physics, namely, how the science of matter evolved before and during the war.
1 Introduction In 1995, when his Japanese friend passed away, physicist Philip W. Anderson (1923– 2020) wrote: “Whatever lucky stars I may have had the fortune to walk under, surely one of the most important was the one which led Ryogo Kubo and me to meet” (Anderson, 1995, p. 896). Anderson was referring to Ryogo Kubo’s invitation that not only led him to Japan in 1953, which itself was an “important experience” (Anderson, 1992, p. 372), but also brought him a lifelong friend and “sensei [teacher]”1 : “the a
e-mail: [email protected] 1 Japanese
words, except names, are written in italics together with their translations in brackets ([]). For simplicity, in some cases, only the translations are written without their original version in Japanese.
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excessive respect for what is ‘known’ or ‘in textbooks’ gradually must be grown out of, and Kubo...was my first teacher in this sense. Japanese readers will understand why I always addressed him as my ‘Sensei ’ in later life” (Anderson, 1995, p. 898). Kubo, Anderson’s sensei, was a Japanese theoretical physicist who made many significant contributions to the fields of statistical mechanics and solid-state and condensed matter physics. His pioneering publications cover
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