Anticorrelation of Mass and Mixing Angle Hierarchies

We obtain a relationship between the hierarchies of mixing angles and of masses pertinent to the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix and the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) lepton mixing matrix. Using this relationship, we argue that the more severe hierarchy of the charge- 2 3 quark masses requires that the CKM matrix be close to a unit matrix whereas the milder hierarchy of the neutrino masses allows the PMNS matrix to depart markedly from the CKM matrix and contain large mixing angles of the type that are observed.