The prestigious Bruno Pontecorvo Prize of JINR, Dubna, was awarded for 2003 to Prof. Yoji Totsuka, Director General of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), for his outstanding contribution to the discovery of atmospheric muon neutrino oscillations.

Prof. Totsuka was one of the central figure in the Kamiokande collaboration to report the first indication of the atmospheric neutrino in 1988. Later in 1998, he led the SuperKamiokande collaboration to the discovery of this phenomenon.