Yoshihide Kozai


Yoshihide Kozai was a Japanese astronomer specialising in celestial mechanics. He is best known for discovering, simultaneously with Michael Lidov, the Kozai mechanism, for which he received the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy in 1979.
From 1988 to 1991, he was the president of the International Astronomical Union.
In 1989, he received the Brouwer Award of the American Astronomical Society. In 2009, he won the Decoration of Cultural Merit from the Japanese government.
He died on 5 February 2018 due to liver failure.
The asteroid 3040 Kozai is named in his honour.