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The 2017 Kyoto Prize
2017
11 /11 Sat
Place：Kyoto International Conference Center
The 2017 Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize Laureates
Lecture topics
My Fifty Years with Transistor
Abstract of the lecture
Do you remember that, 28 years ago, in August, 1989, Voyager 2 spacecraft sent “clear images of Neptune” back to Earth from 4.5 billion km away after 12 years of long travel and we could enjoy watching them on our home TVs? 4.5 billion km is an extremely long distance even for light, which can travel around the earth about 7.5 times per second, to take more than four hours. Therefore, radio waves carrying the image signals become very weak when they reach Earth. Compared with ordinary television radio waves sent from Tokyo Tower at that time, the radio waves sent from Voyager 2 become incredibly weak to the level of about one trillionth of them. Here comes the role of a transistor called “HEMT”. It can detect an image signal from these very weak radio waves. HEMT stands for High Electron Mobility Transistor, and it is used even for equipment which is much closer to us. Recently, we see many parabolic antennas installed on the balconies, etc. In fact, HEMT is used for all of these parabolic antennas. This is to catch the weak radio waves sent from a broadcasting satellite in the geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator. HEMT is a new-generation transistor that disseminated a new medium “BS system” to all over the world. It was 1979 when I invented this HEMT, which was about ten years after I started research of semiconductor transistors. During those years, I had to repeat trial and error, and each time when I came up with a new idea, I tried, and reconsidered what was wrong with it when I failed. I really had to experience many twists and turns. I think this can be said for other research and development fields. When you challenge an unexplored field, you have to undergo a lot of mental strains and uncertainties. At this time, I think that your interest in research subject, personal persistence, colleagues’ support, or encouragement by seniors will help you overcome these difficulties. And, also from now on, I would like to continue doing my best while dreaming of further discovery of cutting-edge technologies.
Lecture topics
The Magical Mystery Tour from Physics and Applied Mathematics to Plant Physiology
Abstract of the lecture
Ever since I was a young teenager I told people that I wanted to be a biophysicist. It was partly the desire to appear different, partly to appear more mature than I really was, but partly also to experience a newly developing field. It turned out that the arbitrary interest grew into something I love, but not without distractions along the way. Attending three different universities before I started my Ph.D. was one such distraction, but depending on one’s viewpoint, so too, perhaps, was learning ballet from the same time I started the Ph.D. The parallels between dance and science are strong, with heavy accent on mastery of technique, the similar roles of choreographer and laboratory head, and the somewhat magical intrusion of creativity. In practice I found that dance helped my science, forcing me to organize my time efficiently, making me fitter, buoying me when the experiments dragged me down, and fostering admiration for imaginative projects done skillfully. Of course it also extended my social life and led to some firm friendships. I stopped dancing when I was forty and moved to a rural block of 18 hectares, with kangaroos, echidnas, wombats and other distractions. We raised three children, which was enormously rewarding. All this time I had thought variously about photosynthesis and plant water relations, ecology and evolution, aspects of economics and optimal control theory and some labelled me as a dilettante. However it all fitted together in thinking about whether land plants exchanged water for carbon dioxide economically. What is economical for a rich person to do with their money is not the same as what is economical for a poor person to do, and the same is true of plants, plentiful water supply corresponding to riches. We spent a lot of time thinking about how to identify plants that are either more adventurous or more conservative. It turns out that this identification can be achieved by measuring the tiny differences in abundance of the heavier stable isotope of carbon in a leaf compared to that in carbon dioxide in the air. Marvellous! Whether viewed as a zig-zag of coincidences, or as the result of forethought, my science has been an enormous source of pleasure, and I would not have missed it for anything.
Lecture topics
All Was Foreseen; Nothing Was Foreseen
Abstract of the lecture
Using my own exceptionally lucky career as illustrative material, I will address some issues in historiography and criticism, as well as the relationship between musicology and other aspects of musical study and practice. They include the dialectic, or interplay, between agency and contingency; the nature of causality; the proper balance between factual reportage and value-laden interpretation or critique in scholarship; the importance of discourse in the mediation of artworks, and the role of musicologists in establishing it. In one sense mine has been a straightforward career in which I followed a path that was already clear to me in childhood. In another sense it has been a tortuous journey that has taken me into areas of inquiry I never predicted, and has given me opportunities that rarely arise for an academic scholar. My activity as a musicologist and music historian has benefitted enormously from my temporary pursuit of other musical activities that might have tempted me off the path I did pursue had chance not intervened. These have included, within music, the study of composition and a brief career as a professional performer of early music, and, outside of music, the field of Russian language, literature and culture. The opportunity to practice journalism alongside more formal academic research and writing has taught me important lessons in style and communication that I have tried to pass on to my pupils. Moreover, my idiosyncratic combination of experiences and expertise have led me to some seemingly improbable, but eventually fruitful and influential, hypotheses. The unlikelihood of my path to them leads me to reflect on the contingent and provisional nature of all human achievement. As I used to tell my pupils, all significant creative careers require three things: aptitude (talent, ability, call it what you will), ambition (or, if you prefer a less contentious term, drive or motivation), and opportunity (also known as luck). Without any one of these, the other two will not suffice. What is true of each of us is true of all of us. In my historical writing I have therefore given what I consider due emphasis to the push and pull of strategy and contingency as determinants, along with the talents or genius of the major figures, of the course of events. To the extent that the historiography of the arts has retained traces of the romanticism that attended the birth of the discipline, these more realistic emphases have been at times controversial. Introspection is therefore a necessary reality check, and I welcome the opportunity this occasion has given me to engage in it.
