On April 29, Hirotaka Sugawara, the KEK Director General, was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the Japanese Government for his outstanding contributions to theoretical physics. Sugawara's interest in physics has been very broad. His ambitious paper "A field theory of currents" (1968) opened the door to the algebraic formulation of field theories. The Sugawara construction of the energy-momentum tensor is now the indispensable tool in formulation of string theories. He formulated extended model of elementary particles with T.Eguchi. He created a zero-parameter model of the nuclear potential with F. von Hippel. The paper "CP violation in six-quark model" with S. Pakvasa pointed out the importance of the paper by Kobayashi and Maskawa.

Sugawara spends most of his time as the Director General of KEK. On weekend, he enjoys studying theoretical physics as a Sunday physicist. Recently, he is interested in cosmology in the superstring theory, especially in the model without stable vacuum. This idea might be originated from Zen Buddhism. He is also studying the algebraic formulation of the relation between the eleven dimensional theory and string theories. He received the Nishina Memorial Prize by his work on "Lee-Sugawara relation" in 1971. He was also awarded the Toray Science and Technology Prize for his outstanding contribution to algebraic formulations of field theories in 1996.

Born in 1938 as a son of a Zen Buddhist, Sugawara's interest in science, especially in chemistry, was aroused when he was in high school. As he grew up, he was fascinated by theoretical physics. When he was still a graduate student at the U. of Tokyo, he derived a relation for non-leptonic hyperon decay amplitudes, called "Lee-Sugawara relation". He received Ph.D. from U. of Tokyo in 1966. After spending several years each at Cornell, U.C.Berkley, U. of Chicago and Tokyo U. of Education, he became an associate professor of the INS at the U. of Tokyo in 1970. In 1974, he came to Tsukuba as a professor of KEK. He has been the Director General of KEK since 1989.