Makoto Kobayashi
Half of the 2008 prize went to [[Makoto Kobayashi (physicist)|Makoto Kobayashi]] and [[Toshihide Maskawa]] for their 1972 work on [[quark]] mixing. This postulated the existence of three additional quarks beyond the three then known to exist and used this postulate to provide a possible mechanism for [[CP violation]], which had been observed 8 years earlier. Their work expanded and reinterpreted research by the Italian physicist [[Nicola Cabibbo]], dating to 1963, before the quark model was even introduced. The resulting quark mixing matrix, which described probabilities of different quarks to turn into each other under the action of the [[weak force]], is known as [[CKM matrix]], after Cabibbo, Kobayashi, and Maskawa. Cabibbo arguably merited a share of the award. The recipient of the other half of the 2008 prize was [[Yoichiro Nambu]] for the discovery of the mechanism of [[Spontaneous symmetry breaking|spontaneous broken symmetry]] in [[subatomic]] physics. The fundamental step in this field is the [[Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model]] (NJL model), developed together with the Italian theoretical physicist [[Giovanni Jona-Lasinio]], who was left out of the prize like Cabibbo. In recognition to his colleague's work, Nambu asked Jona-Lasinio to hold the Nobel Lecture at the Stockholm University in his place. As the prize is awarded each year to at most three people for no more than two different research works, the committee was forced to skip one member each from both the CKM and the NJL workgroups.