Kyoto University professor emeritus Chushiro Hayashi, an who helped pioneer the application of atomic physics to astronomy, died of pneumonia at a Kyoto hospital Sunday, sources close to him said Monday. He was 89.
After serving as a research associate under Nobel laureate Hideki Yukawa, the Kyoto native made a significant contribution in 1950 to the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow model of nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang.
He went on to become the first Japanese to receive the Eddington Medal from Britain's Royal Astronomical Society in 1970 and the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 2004.
The government named Hayashi a person of cultural merit in 1982 and awarded him the Order of Culture in 1986.