Kazumi Maki

Kazumi Maki (kanji: 真木 和美, kana: まき かずみ Maki Kazumi, January 27, 1936, Takamatsu, Japan – September 10, 2008, Los Angeles) was a Japanese theoretical physicist, known for his research in "superconductivity, superfluid ³He, and quasi‑one‑dimensional (1D) materials."

Biography Kazumi Maki spent most of his childhood in Kyoto. At Kyoto University he received his Ph.D. in 1964 with a thesis on theoretical particle physics, written under the supervision of Hideki Yukawa. Maki was a postdoc at the University of Chicago for the academic year 1964–1965 and an assistant professor from 1965 to 1967 at the University of California, San Diego. From 1967 to 1974 he was a professor at Tohoku University. From 1974 until his death in 2008 he was a professor at the University of Southern California (USC). during this time he worked with Hagen Kleinert.

Maki was the author or co-author of approximately 500 scientific publications. In the 1960s and early 1970s his research dealt with BCS theory. In 1968 he published his theoretical analysis predicting an anomalous increase in electrical conductivity caused by superconducting fluctuations just above the critical temperature for a low-temperature superconductor. This predicted increase in conductivity is empirically valid, and the corresponding term in perturbation theory is now called the "Maki-Thompson term." and published by Marcel Dekker in 1969.

From the early 1970s until 1990, Maki investigated superfluid ³He and quasi-one-dimensional materials. He received in 1972 the Nishina Memorial Prize and in 2006, from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the with citation "for his work on gapless quasiparticle excitations due to pair-breaking and for elucidating the role of fluctuations".

His doctoral students include Robijn Bruinsma and Dieter Vollhardt.

He and his wife, Masako, were aficionados of the Los Angeles Music Center. At their home they frequently played duets — Kazumi's violin and Masako's piano. Upon his death he was survived by his widow.