Yoshiaki Kiyanagi is a pioneer in the development of pulsed neutron imaging and its application for engineering and material science.
He was born on January 1st, 1949 in Hokkaido (Japan) and studied at Hokkaido University, where he graduated from the Department of Nuclear Engineering in 1961 and got his PhD in 1993. He became an assistant professor, lecturer, associate professor and finally full professor of Hokkaido University. He had been the division head of the Nuclear radiation source engineering and educated many students and researchers. One of his contributions to scientific research is concerning the accelerator neutron source. He performed a lot of experiments at the Hokkaido University Neutron Source (HUNS) to obtain valuable experimental data which cannot be obtained by numerical simulations. With sufficient experimental data he has designed and developed a low-energy neutron moderation system. The ability of this system has been highly evaluated and employed by many institutes, like J-PARC in Japan, SNS of Oak ledge National Laboratory in the USA, and ISIS of Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory in UK.
He has developed the Accurate Neutron-Nucleus Reaction measurement Instrument (ANNRI) in the J-PARC. For this development, he won a technology development award from the Atomic Energy Society of Japan. He has also developed the pulsed neutron transmission spectroscopy, which gives spatial distribution of crystal structure in materials. For this development, he won a paper award from Japanese Society of Metals and Materials.. Then he became a project leader to develop the pulsed neutron imaging facility (RADEN) in the J-PARC. The construction of RADEN was finished in 2014 and at present we can perform various kinds experiments at the J-PARC.
When he was a high school student, he began Japanese martial art, “Kendo”. Kendo is a traditional Japanese fencing. Normally we are using a Bamboo sword for practice instead of a real Japanese sword. So, he got great interest in the manufacturing process of the Japanese swords and started his investigation on the crystal structure of Japanese sword using pulsed neutron imaging. He is now Prof. Emeritus of Hokkaido University and X’ian University in China, and President of Japanese Society for Neutron Science. He is still actively developing an accelerator neutron source for radiation therapy equipment at Nagoya University.
For his great contributions in our society, the honorable membership award was given to Prof. Yoshiaki Kiyanagi.
