Paul Kazuo Kuroda (1 April 1917 – 16 April 2001), was a Japanese-American chemist and nuclear scientist.

Life

He was born on April 1, 1917 in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. He died on April 16, 2001 at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Career

He received bachelors and doctoral degrees from the Imperial

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

. He studied under Professor Kenjiro Kimura. His first paper was published in 1935. He focused mostly on radio and cosmochemistry, and most of his 40 papers published prior to 1944 are about the chemistry of hot springs. In 1944, he became the youngest faculty member of the Imperial University of Tokyo, and after World War II, despite the ban on

radiochemistry Radiochemistry is the chemistry of radioactive materials, where radioactive isotopes of elements are used to study the properties and chemical reactions of non-radioactive isotopes (often within radiochemistry the absence of radioactivity leads ...

in Japan, he continued to study radiochemistry until 1949. On arrival to the United States in 1949, he met with nuclear chemist,

Glenn Seaborg Glenn Theodore Seaborg (; April 19, 1912February 25, 1999) was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work i ...

. He became an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Arkansas in 1952, becoming a US citizen in 1955. In 1956, Kuroda was the first to propose that natural self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions were possible. Such a reactor was discovered in September 1972 in the Oklo Mines of

Gabon Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the nort ...

. He became the first Edgar Wertheim Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in 1979, he officially retired from the University of Arkansas in 1987.

Honours

He is the winner of the Pure Chemistry Prize.

References

External links

* http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=6619 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuroda, Paul 1917 births 2001 deaths People from Fukuoka Prefecture University of Tokyo alumni Nuclear chemists Japanese emigrants to the United States University of Arkansas faculty American academics of Japanese descent