Particle physicist Kazuhiko Nishijima died Sunday of acute lymphatic leukemia at a hospital in Musashino, Tokyo, his family said. He was 82.
Nishijima was known for discovering "strangeness" in particle physics and for his pioneering accomplishments in the field.
After graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1948, he advanced the Gell-Mann-Nishijima formula along with U.S. physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1969, laying the groundwork for elementary particle theory. Nishijima was a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University.