2008 诺贝尔物理学奖颁给了三个日本物理学家：

Yoichiro Nambu（南部阳一郎）, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics（亚原子物理中的自发对称性破缺机制）".

Makoto Kobayashi（小林誠）, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan

and Toshihide Maskawa（益川敏英）, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature（发现对称性破缺的来源，预言至少三类夸克粒子的存在）".

这里有一份此次诺贝尔物理学奖的科学背景资料。