Shoichi Sakata: His Life and Physics Collections of Materials in Sakata Memorial Archival Library

Shoichi Sakata and his Nagoya School made a lot of important achievements at the predawn of the particle physics revolution. The "two-meson" theory (introduction of the second generation leptons), the "C-meson theory" (a theory which inspired Tomonaga's renormalization theory), the "Sakata model" (a precursor to the quark model), and the "Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata" theory on the neutrino mixings are among them. These outputs are now regarded as essential ingredients in modern particle physics. Sakata also took his leadership in setting up democratic administration system in his theoretical particle physics group (E-ken). It was this democratic atmosphere in which many excellent physicists were brought up as Sakata's diciples. In this talk, I introduce Sakata and his achievements in physics, showing various materials archived in the Sakata Memorial Archival Library (SMAL), an archival repository of primary material showing Sakata's activities. These SMAL documents vividly show Sakata's way of thinking in his approach to the new physics.