YASUO FUKUI
Dr. Yasuo Fukui received his university education at the University of Tokyo, where he earned his BA, MA and D.Sc. degrees in astronomy in 1974, 1976, and 1979, respectively.
In 1980-1987 Dr. Fukui served as an assistant professor of the Department of Astrophysics at Nagoya University, where he initiated a group of cosmic radio astronomy. He was an associate professor from 1987 to 1993 and is a professor in the same Department from 1993 to present.
In Nagoya Dr. Fukui built and used two 4m mm-wave telescopes in order to make a large-scale survey of molecular clouds in the Milky Way. In the 1980's and early 90's he focused his efforts in discovering protostars that exhibit energetic outflow based on unbiased mm-wave observations of molecular clouds. In these studies he and his group discovered some 80 outflows in the Galaxy about one third of the whole known to date and demonstrated the usefulness of such small instruments.
In 1996, Dr. Fukui and his group moved one of the 4-m telescopes to Las Campanas in Chile and established a southern radio observatory under collaboration with the Carnegie Observatories. Since then, he has been leading extensive study of the interstellar molecular clouds in the southern sky where such studies are so scarce. The recent achievements include the complete detection of giant molecular clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud and discovery of molecular supershells where extensive formation of massive stars are triggered under the impacts of tens of supernova explosions.
Dr. Fukui received the following honors; Vainu Bappu Gold Medal (the Indian Astronomical Society, 1986), the Seventh Inoue Science Prize (1989), and the Second Nissan Science Award (1993). In addition, the Minor Planet No. 7890 was named "Yasuofukui" in 1999 by the International Astronomical Union to recognize Dr. Fukui's contribution to astronomy.