Yoji Totsuka

Yoji Totsuka (戸塚 洋二, Totsuka Yōji^?, March 6, 1942 – July 10, 2008) was a Japanese physicist and Special University Professor, Emeritus, University of Tokyo. Totsuka died on July 10, 2008 from colorectal cancer.

His doctoral advisor - the Nobel Prize winning physicist Masatoshi Koshiba was told that if Totsuka can extend his lifespan by eighteen months, he must receive the prize.

Totsuka was born March 6, 1942 in Fuji, Shizuoka Prefecture. He completed his B.S. in 1965, his M.S. in 1967 and his Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Tokyo.

Totsuka became a Research Associate at the University of Tokyo in 1972, followed by seven years at Deutsches Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Germany, where he investigated electron–positron collisions. Subsequently, he became an Associate Professor of the University of Tokyo from 1979 to 1987. In 1987, he was promoted to full Professor at the University of Tokyo. He later became the Director of the Kamioka Observatory, part of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research (ICRR) at the University of Tokyo in 1995 and then Director of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research in 1997. In 2003, Totsuka became the Director General of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK).

Totsuka's career in neutrino physics began following his time at DESY, when he began working as part of the Kamiokande experiment with Nobel prize winner Masatoshi Koshiba. The experiment, though designed to detect proton decay, actually ended up successfully measuring the first and so far only neutrinos from a cosmogenic source on Earth, from SN 1987A, along with the Irvine–Michigan–Brookhaven (IMB) detector in the US.

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