Ryugo Hayano (University of Tokyo, Japan)
Ryugo Hayano, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor, Department of Physics at the University of Tokyo. From 1997 to 2017, he was the spokesperson of an “antimatter” research team called “ASACUSA”, at CERN’s antiproton decelerator facility. In 2008 he received the Nishina Memorial Prize, the most prestigious physics prize in Japan, for his study on the precision laser spectroscopy of “antiproton is helium” atoms.
In March 2011, his tweets related to the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident attracted some 150,000 followers, which triggered him to work on the radiation protection of Fukushima residents, in close collaboration with medical doctors in Fukushima. His activities in Fukushima include systematic measurement of school lunch for radiocaesium, study of internal exposures using whole body counters, development of a whole-body counter for small children (BABYSCAN), and comparison of external radiation doses of high school students living in Fukushima, outside of Fukushima, France, Poland and Belarus. He is also known as the author of a successful book “We want to know - a conversation about radiation and its effects in the aftermath of the accident”.
