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was a Japanese
organic chemist Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, J. ...
and marine biologist, and
Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
at
Marine Biological Laboratory The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research and education in biological and environmental science. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution that was independent ...
(MBL) in
Woods Hole, Massachusetts Woods Hole is a census-designated place in the town of Falmouth in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. It lies at the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod, near Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. The population was 781 ...
and
Boston University School of Medicine The Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, formerly the Boston University School of Medicine, is one of the graduate schools of Boston University. Founded in 1848, the medical school was the first institution in the world t ...
. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
in 2008 for the discovery and development of
green fluorescent protein The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a protein that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to light in the blue to ultraviolet range. The label ''GFP'' traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the jellyfish '' Aequore ...
(GFP) with two American scientists: Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and
Roger Tsien Roger Yonchien Tsien (pronounced , "'' CHEN''"'';'' February 1, 1952 – August 24, 2016) was an American biochemist. He was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego and was awarded the Nobel Prize in ...
of the University of California-San Diego.


Biography

Born in
Fukuchiyama, Kyoto 250px, Fukuchiyama Castle 250px, Fukuchiyama city center is a city in northern Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 76,037 in 36412 households and a population density of 140 persons per km². The total area of t ...
in 1928, Shimomura was brought up in
Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of (Great) Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Manchuria from 1932 until 1945. It was founded as a republic in 1932 after the Japanese ...
(
Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...
, China) and
Osaka, Japan is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 ...
while his father served as an officer in the
Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emper ...
. Later, his family moved to
Isahaya, Nagasaki is a city located in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. The city was founded on September 1, 1940. As of November 1, 2022, the city has an estimated population of 132,385 and a population density of 389 persons per km². The total area is . On Marc ...
, 25 km from the epicenter of the August 1945 atomic bombing of the city. He recalled hearing, as a 16-year-old boy, the bomber plane ''
Bockscar ''Bockscar'', sometimes called Bock's Car, is the name of the United States Army Air Forces B-29 bomber that dropped a Fat Man nuclear weapon over the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II in the secondand most recent nuclear attack in ...
'' before the atom bomb exploded.Nobelprize.org
Nobel laureate lecture.
December 8, 2008.
The explosion flash blinded Shimomura for about thirty seconds, and he was later drenched by the "black rain" bomb fallout. He overcame great odds in the following 11 years to earn an education and achieve academic success. Shimomura's education opportunities were starkly limited in devastated, post-war Japan. Although he later recalled having no interest in the subject, he enrolled in the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Nagasaki Medical College (now Nagasaki University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences). The Medical College campus had been entirely destroyed by the atomic bomb blast, forcing the pharmacy school to relocate to a temporary campus near Shimomura's home. This proximity was the fortuitous reason he embarked upon the studies and career which would ultimately lead to unanticipated rewards. Shimomura was awarded a BS degree in pharmacy in 1951, and he stayed on as a lab assistant through 1955. Shimomura's mentor at Nagasaki helped him find employment as an assistant to Professor
Yoshimasa Hirata was a Japanese organic chemist. Biography Hirata was born in Yamaguchi, Japan in 1915. He received a Bachelor of Science from the Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1941, and then joined the faculty there as a Lecturer ...
at
Nagoya University , abbreviated to or NU, is a Japanese national research university located in Chikusa-ku, Nagoya. It was the seventh Imperial University in Japan, one of the first five Designated National University and selected as a Top Type university of ...
in 1956. While working for Professor Hirata, he received a MS degree in organic chemistry in 1958 and, before leaving Japan for an appointment at Princeton University, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1960 at Nagoya University. At Nagoya, Hirata assigned Shimomura the challenging task of determining what made the crushed remains of a type of
crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapoda, decapods, ostracoda, seed shrimp, branchiopoda, branchiopods, argulidae, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopoda, isopods, barnacles, copepods, ...
(Jp. ''umi-hotaru'', lit. "sea-firefly", '' Vargula hilgendorfii'') glow when moistened with water. This assignment led Shimomura to the successful identification of the protein causing the phenomenon, and he published the preliminary findings in the ''
Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan is a scientific journal, which was founded in 1926 by the Chemical Society of Japan. It publishes accounts, articles, and short articles in the fields of theoretical and physical chemistry, analytical and inorganic chemistry, organic and biolog ...
'' in a paper titled "Crystalline Cypridina luciferin." The article caught the attention of Professor Frank Johnson at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, and Johnson successfully recruited Shimomura to work with him in 1960.


Study

Shimomura worked in the Department of Biology at
Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nin ...
for Professor Johnson to study the
bioluminescent Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by living organisms. It is a form of chemiluminescence. Bioluminescence occurs widely in marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some fungi, microorganisms including some b ...
jellyfish ''
Aequorea victoria ''Aequorea victoria'', also sometimes called the crystal jelly, is a bioluminescent hydrozoan jellyfish, or hydromedusa, that is found off the west coast of North America. The species is best known as the source of two proteins involved in biolu ...
'', which they collected during many summers at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the
University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seatt ...
. In 1962, their work culminated in the discovery of the proteins aequorin and
green fluorescent protein The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a protein that exhibits bright green fluorescence when exposed to light in the blue to ultraviolet range. The label ''GFP'' traditionally refers to the protein first isolated from the jellyfish '' Aequore ...
(GFP) in ''A. victoria''; for this work, he was awarded a third of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008.


Family

His wife, Akemi, whom Shimomura met at Nagasaki University, is also an organic chemist and was a partner in his research activities. Their son, Tsutomu Shimomura, is a computer security expert who was involved in the arrest of Kevin Mitnick. Their daughter, Sachi Shimomura, is director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department at
Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virginia ...
and the author of ''Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature''.


Recognition

* 2004 – Pearse Prize, Royal Microscopical Society * 2005 – Emile Chamot Award * 2006 –
Asahi Prize The , established in 1929, is an award presented by the Japanese newspaper ''Asahi Shimbun'' and Asahi Shimbun Foundation to honor individuals and groups that have made outstanding accomplishments in the fields of arts and academics and have greatl ...
* 2008 –
Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...
* 2008 –
Order of Culture The is a Japanese order, established on February 11, 1937. The order has one class only, and may be awarded to men and women for contributions to Japan's art, literature, science, technology, or anything related to culture in general; recipient ...
* 2008 –
Person of Cultural Merit is an official Japanese recognition and honor which is awarded annually to select people who have made outstanding cultural contributions. This distinction is intended to play a role as a part of a system of support measures for the promotion of ...
* 2012 – Golden Goose Award * 2013 – Member of the
United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the N ...
* 2018 –
Junior third rank The court ranks of Japan, also known in Japanese as ''ikai'' (位階), are indications of an individual's court rank in Japan based on the system of the state. ''Ikai'' as a system was originally used in the Ritsuryo system, which was the poli ...
(posthumous)


Selected publications

*''Bioluminescence: Chemical Principles and Methods (Revised Edition)'' (WSPC 2012) . *


See also

* List of Japanese Nobel laureates * Kamo Aquarium


References


Sources

* including the Nobel lecture ''Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Shimomura, Osamu Japanese chemists 2018 deaths 1928 births Organic chemists People from Kyoto Prefecture Boston University School of Medicine faculty Nobel laureates in Chemistry Japanese Nobel laureates Recipients of the Order of Culture Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Nagoya University alumni Hibakusha