Italian physicists say colleague ‘robbed of’ Nobel Prize by Japanese scientists

Written by Chang on Sunday, October 12th, 2008

ROME - Italian physicists are complaining that their colleague Nicola Cabibbo was ‘‘robbed of’’ this year’s Nobel Prize in physics by Japanese scientists, major Italian newspapers reported Wednesday.

Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built the world’s largest particle accelerator, have also raised questions about the exclusion of Cabibbo from among the prize recipients.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences decided earlier this week to award the prize to three researchers, including Makoto Kobayashi, professor emeritus at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization based in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, and Toshihide Masukawa, professor at Kyoto Sangyo University.

According to the Italian papers, the country’s physicists claim that Cabibbo, 73, professor at the University of Rome, laid the foundation that led to the discovery in question published in 1973 by the two Japanese researchers.

Kobayashi, 64, and Masukawa, 68, won the prize ‘‘for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature,’’ according to the Swedish academy.

As the discovery was based on an earlier finding in 1963 by Cabibbo, scientific circles often refer to the theory as the ‘‘Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Masukawa’’ matrix.

Cabibbo himself has not commented on the situation.

The third recipient of this year’s physics prize is Yoichiro Nambu, a Tokyo-born U.S. scientist, who is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. He was recognized for his discovery of the mechanism of ‘‘spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.’’ Nambu won half the award, while the other two shared the remaining half.

The Swedish academy says the physics prize can be ‘‘shared by three laureates at the most.’’