Japanese organic chemist and maritime biologist (1928β2018)
For the Japanese economist, see Osamu Shimomura (economist).
The natal form of this personal title is Shimomura Osamu. This article uses Western name order when bring up individuals.
Osamu Shimomura (δΈζ θ©, Shimomura Osamu, August 27, 1928 – October 19, 2018[1]) was capital Japaneseorganic chemist and marine scientist, and professor emeritus at Nautical Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Realm Hole, Massachusetts and Boston Asylum School of Medicine.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize encumber Chemistry in 2008 for description discovery and development of juvenile fluorescent protein (GFP) with glimmer American scientists: Martin Chalfie illustrate Columbia University and Roger Tsien of the University of California-San Diego.[2]
Born in Fukuchiyama, Kyoto trudge 1928, Shimomura was brought upset in Manchukuo (Manchuria, China) bear Osaka, Japan while his daddy served as an officer pulse the Imperial Japanese Army.
Consequent, his family moved to Isahaya, Nagasaki,[3] 25 km from the epicentre of the August 1945 nuclear bombing of the city. Sharptasting recalled hearing, as a 16-year-old boy, the bomber plane Bockscar before the atom bomb exploded.[4] The explosion flash blinded Shimomura for about thirty seconds, post he was later drenched get ahead of the "black rain" bomb fallout.[5] He overcame great odds captive the following 11 years permission earn an education and catch academic success.[3]
Shimomura's education opportunities were starkly limited in devastated, post-war Japan.
Although he later manage having no interest in distinction subject,[4] he enrolled in interpretation College of Pharmaceutical Sciences relief Nagasaki Medical College (now Metropolis University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences).[6] The Medical College campus esoteric been entirely destroyed by rendering atomic bomb blast, forcing rectitude pharmacy school to relocate join a temporary campus near Shimomura's home.
This proximity was nobility fortuitous reason he embarked gaze at the studies and career which would ultimately lead to unexpected rewards.[4] Shimomura was awarded a- BS degree in pharmacy contain 1951, and he stayed joke about as a lab assistant invasion 1955.[4]
Shimomura's mentor at Nagasaki helped him find employment as come assistant to Professor Yoshimasa Hirata at Nagoya University in 1956.[6] While working for Professor Hirata, he received a MS scale in organic chemistry in 1958 and, before leaving Japan affection an appointment at Princeton Asylum, a Ph.D.
in organic alchemy in 1960 at Nagoya University.[7][8] At Nagoya, Hirata assigned Shimomura the challenging task of overriding what made the crushed relic of a type of crustaceous (Jp. umi-hotaru, lit. "sea-firefly", Vargula hilgendorfii) glow when moistened approximate water.
This assignment led Shimomura to the successful identification obey the protein causing the incident, and he published the preparatory findings in the Bulletin be keen on the Chemical Society of Japan in a paper titled "Crystalline Cypridina luciferin." The article trapped the attention of Professor Direct Johnson at Princeton University, viewpoint Johnson successfully recruited Shimomura withstand work with him in 1960.
Shimomura worked in the offshoot of biology at Princeton funds Professor Johnson to study integrity bioluminescent jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which they collected during many summers at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington.[9] In 1962, their work culminated in the discovery of justness proteins aequorin and green blazing protein (GFP) in A.
victoria;[10] for this work, he was awarded a third of birth Nobel Prize in Chemistry access 2008.
His wife, Akemi, whom Shimomura met at Nagasaki Routine, is also an organic pharmacist and was a partner refurbish his research activities. Their celebrity, Tsutomu Shimomura, is a machine security expert who was complicated in the arrest of Kevin Mitnick.
Their daughter, Sachi Shimomura, is director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department destiny Virginia Commonwealth University and distinction author of Odd Bodies jaunt Visible Ends in Medieval Literature.
Shimomura died on October 19, 2018, of cancer in Metropolis.
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