Hiroyuki Yoshikawa

Hiroyuki Yoshikawa (吉川弘之) is a Japanese engineer. He specialises in precision engineering and general design theory. He served as the 25th president of the University of Tokyo and the 20th and 21st president of the Science Council of Japan. He is a member of the Japan Academy and a recipient of the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure.

Career After graduating from the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) in 1956, he began his career as an engineer at Mitsubishi Shipbuilding. He later returned to academia, earning his PhD from UTokyo in 1964. He remained in academia and became a professor at UTokyo in 1978. He is known for advocating a new perspective in design and engineering, one that does not overly focus on achieving local optima in individual fields, but rather aims to achieve a global optimum and maximise the outcome of the work. He coined the term 'modern evils' to describe the unwanted outcomes that human efforts for a better world have created. He maintains that addressing this issue requires this new perspective, which bridges fragmented academic disciplines to synthesise new solutions and artificial objects.