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The 2011 Kyoto Prize
2011
11 /11 Fri
Place：Kyoto International Conference Center
The 2011 Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize Laureates
Lecture topics
Science during Paradigm Creation
Abstract of the lecture
Years ago, in mid-career, I read Thomas Kuhn’s classic, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” and finally understood why was happy to have left physical chemistry and become a metallurgist. Metallurgy was exciting to me because it was in a paradigm building stage. I would often suggest to students and colleagues that read Kuhn would help them find their niche. Most preferred the power and certainty of working with well-established laws. Some enjoyed careful observations without deep understanding as in the pre-paradigm sciences. An adventurous few wanted to do paradigm building. As a child I loved asking difficult questions, and gravitated towards science, getting a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at age 24. Kuhn calls physical chemistry a mature science with firmly established laws. Most chemists were happy, that by relying on these laws, their work could be perfect. A few were working in fringe fields that did not have rules; their work was frowned on, but I found some of it interesting. I had been taught that solids were inert and thus of no interest to chemists, but after taking a course in the physics of solids, I thought otherwise. Metallurgy and ceramics were ancient crafts with an enormous amount of fascinating craft knowledge that presented opportunities for new science. I became intrigued with the possibility of creating a chemistry of solids and took a chance by obtaining a position in the Institute for the Study of Metals at the University of Chicago. Two years later I was fortunate to join the world-class Metallurgy and Ceramics Department of the General Electric Research Laboratory which expected independence from their researchers, and sponsored the full range of activities from very fundamental research, to bringing new ideas to applications. Even the occasional commercial problems we were asked to solve, gave us the opportunity to dig deeper, identify missing science, and provide sound solutions. I blossomed in that atmosphere, and quickly gained wide recognition. I valued independence and had it in my later employment at MIT and NIST. To my amazement, many of the paradigms we created in metallurgy are universally applicable and useful in many science and some social science fields. Some will be discussed in the lecture.
Lecture topics
50 Years of Continuous Revolution in Astrophysics and Cosmology
Abstract of the lecture
I was born in the middle of the Second World War in a multi-ethnic city on the former Silk Road in the former Soviet Union. At the age of 17 I went to study physics in Moscow. My introduction to Yakov Zel'dovich, the well known Soviet physicist, completely changed my life because: 1. I got the opportunity to work with that active, hard working and very friendly great scientist; 2. I was invited to do research in high energy astrophysics and cosmology even though my previous advisors told me that this is useless science. This was an extremely lucky step because before the early 60s development of the world of astronomy was relatively slow. But in the middle of the 60s giant discoveries were being made practically every year. Among these great discoveries made during last 50 years were: 1. cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), filling the whole Universe. Its angular distribution and frequency spectrum carries a lot of information about key properties of the Universe as a whole; 2. quasistellar radio sources (quasars) at cosmological distances. Today we know that these extremely bright sources of radiation in all spectral bands are accreting supermassive black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies; 3. radio pulsars which occurred to be rapidly rotating, strongly magnetized neutron stars; 4. gamma-ray bursts which for a few seconds appear much brighter in gamma-rays than the whole sky; 5. accreting stellar mass black holes and neutron stars with quasiregular nuclear explosions on their surfaces; 6. exoplanets, which opened the way to a better understanding of the origin and uniqueness of the planets in the Solar System; 7. evidence for the inflation of the Universe at it’s very early stages, and evidence for the existence of dark energy and dark matter, which no one was able yet to detect in the ground based physical labs. I know personally many observational astronomers, cosmologists and theoretical astrophysicists in different countries on the globe who were actively working on these problems. With their common efforts scientists were able to understand the nature of newly detected phenomena and explain them on the basis of well known physics. But it was even more interesting when theorists were able to predict new effects, and the rapid development of the technology of radiation detectors led to the observations of these predicted events on the sky. Each of these steps confirmed that our understanding of our Universe is correct. In the case of effects proposed by my mentor, Yakov Zel'dovich, and me, it was necessary to wait more than 40 years before such observations became possible and useful for modern cosmology. It’s an incredible feeling to recognize that these predicted traces of the sound waves existing at the early stages of the Universe will continue to be visible on the sky for the next billions of years and there is a great question: will there still be observers on the Earth at that time. It’s a pity that Yakov Zel'dovich is unable to witness how the South Pole Telescope, Atacama Cosmology Telescope in the driest desert in Chile at an altitude of 5 km, and Planck Surveyor spacecraft report detection of many hundreds of “negative” radio sources in the directions toward clusters of galaxies with hot intercluster gas. We now know a lot about our Universe and its properties and parameters. Nevertheless, there are many open questions and I hope that at least for the next 20-30 years my science—astrophysics and cosmology—will continue to glow.
Lecture topics
My Thoughts on the Performing Arts
Abstract of the lecture
Today, I would like to talk about how I became involved in the performing arts. Let me begin by sharing my thoughts on “acting.” As a child, I would often behave like someone else, imitate others, or become some other person according to how I interpreted the impression that he or she had made on me. I think that this was my main motivator to “act.” However, at that stage, I had no desire to become a professional actor. When I succeeded to the name of Tamasaburo Bando V at the age of 14, my foster father told me, “From today on, you will be a professional.” It was at that point that I first realized that I would become a professional actor. To be a professional, one needs to learn about the historical processes through which the craft has passed to arrive at today’s contemporary style of acting. In other words, a professional must know how a certain form of acting has changed through each distinctive period attaining the form in which we know it today. And, to become an onnagata, or an actor who plays female roles, one must master kabu ongyoku, or Japanese music and dance, among other things. To be a good Kabuki actor, it is also important to be able to recite lines as if one were singing. Kabuki actors need to be able to play musical instruments too. Moreover, they must have mastered proper manners so that they can effectively represent, in a professional manner, the classical lifestyles that one often sees in Kabuki plays originally created in the Edo period (1603-1868). And, of course, Kabuki actors are required to learn about stage settings, costumes, hairdressing, makeup styles, and the historical background of each play, so that they know how to play the role in a manner that chimes with the milieu of the time. However, when you come right down to it, one might say that the very essence of actors and actresses in general and, indeed, the original craft of acting is to behave as if you were a different person and – although impossible in reality – to feel that you have become someone other than yourself and can step into different places and time periods. I did not have a clear understanding of this concept in my younger years; rather I came to learn it after I was given opportunities to perform in front of audiences as a professional. That said, isn’t it the case that what we actors present to the audience through our performances on stage is not our own acting but a world that lies far beyond the performance itself? I believe it important that the audience comes to feel illusions, ideals, and imaginings through the theatrical space. I also believe that to become what your imagination creates as you act is to become something that is not yourself, which can then develop into a state where you vanish from this world to become free and something that is beyond merely human, or to become assimilated into space, a scent, or a part of nature. My interpretation of the performing arts is something that originates in childhood play – be part of the flow of water, a cherry tree, perhaps a frog, and then a monkey – but gradually becomes more sophisticated, such as being able to express a literary idea or something that is culturally profound. In addition to what I have described thus far, I believe that the single most important goal from both my perspective and that of the audience in viewing a work of art is to fly out of the everyday and allow one’s soul to wander freely. I will be discussing these matters from various perspectives, including the fundamentals of acting and characters.
