Tajima, Toshiki

Toshiki Tajima (Japanese: 田島俊樹, Hepburn: Tajima Toshiki, born January 18, 1948) is a Japanese theoretical plasma physicist known for pioneering the laser wakefield acceleration technique with John M. Dawson in 1979. The technique is used to accelerate particles in a plasma and was experimentally realized in 1994, for which Tajima received several awards such as the Nishina Memorial Prize (2006), the Enrico Fermi Prize (2015), the Robert R. Wilson Prize (2019), the Hannes Alfvén Prize (2019) and the Charles Hard Townes Award (2020). Tajima is currently a professor of the University of California, Irvine, and is the Chief Science Officer of TAE Technologies. His works involve plasma physics, laser physics, nuclear fusion, plasma astrophysics, accelerator physics and medical applications of physics.