Biography of Kôsaku Yosida Kôsaku Yosida (7.2.1909-20.6.1990) was born in Hiroshima, Japan. After studying mathematics a the University of Tokyo he held posts at Osaka and Nagoya Universities before returning to the University of Tokyo in 1955. Yosida obtained important and fundamental results in functional analysis and probability. He is best remembered for his joint work with E. Hille which brought forth a theory of semigroups of operators successfully applied to diffusion equations, Markov processes, hyperbolic equations and potential theory. His famous textbook on Functional Analysis was published in 6 distinct editions between 1965 and 1980.