The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is responsible for awarding the Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry, probably said it best when it described this year's physics laureates as having "used [the] very smallest components of the universe to increase our understanding of the very largest, the sun, stars, galaxies and supernovae."
The Academy was referring to cosmic neutrinos, the tiny, invisible, unreactive particles that make up sunshine and the light from other stars -- the arcane research field of two of the winners. But in defining the scope of the work's importance, it might as well have been talking about the cosmos-size elation of the Japanese scientific community when it heard that not one, but two of its members had been accorded science's highest honor this week. On Tuesday it was announced that Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba, emeritus professor at Tokyo University, was one of the three physics Nobel laureates for 2002; the very next day, Mr. Koichi Tanaka of Shimadzu Corp. in Kyoto was one of the three named as this year's chemistry laureates.
Taking their cue from the physicists, perhaps, Japanese commentators immediately labeled news of the double victory "sunshine among the clouds," a ray of light in a country too long shadowed by economic gloom that, if anything, has only darkened in recent days. For once, the cliche seemed forgivable.