Wife of Nobel Prize winner from Tokyo teaches at Russian university in Novosibirsk

NOVOSIBIRSK, October 10. /TASS/. The wife of Japanese Nobel Prize winner in Physics Hiroshi Amano has been teaching Japanese to students of Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University in Russia.

The wife of the Nobel laureate learned about the high award conferred on her husband when she was on an excursion with university students. The students were the first to express congratulations to the their teacher, TASS was told by Lyudmila Dryomova, Deputy chief of the university Department for history of culture and museum organization. Dryomova helps the Japanese teacher, whose Russian is poor yet, to communicate with Russian students.

Kasumi Amano arrived in Novosibirsk in the end of August in the framework of cooperation between Novosibirsk University and Hokkaido University. She is planning to stay in Russia for one year.

"Her reaction to the news was unbelievable. She received a telephone call and then shouted and waved her hands at the same time. I feared if it was a volcano eruption or any other such thing. One can never guess, looking at a Japanese face, whether it expresses grief or happiness. Then she explained, and the students all at once began to express their congratulations," Dryomova said.

Hiroshi and Kasumi Amano have been married for 30 years. They have two grown-up children. "When we got married my husband told me that he loves me, but that his work was important for him as well. He said he would come home late, and I agreed,” Dryomova quoted the happy woman as saying. Kasumi Amano will accompany her husband to a gala ceremony in December.

Apart from Amano, Japanese scientist Isamu Akasaki and Japanese-born U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura, a 60-year-old professor at the University of California, were named recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2014.