Osamu Shimomura

下村 脩 Osamu Shimomura
Born	(1928-08-27) August 27, 1928 Kyoto, Japan
Nationality	Japan
Alma mater	Nagasaki University Nagoya University
Scientific career
Institutions	Boston University Medical School Marine Biological Laboratory

Osamu Shimomura (下村 脩, Shimomura Osamu, born August 27, 1928) is a Japanese organic chemist/scientist and marine biologist. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Nagoya University and is Professor Emeritus at Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and Boston University Medical School. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for his discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP) with two other American scientists: Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Tsien of the University of California-San Diego.

Early life

Born in Fukuchiyama, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan in 1928, Shimomura was brought up in Manchuria and Osaka where his father, an army officer, was serving the Japanese Military Regime. Later, his family moved to Isahaya, Nagasaki. He was a first-hand witness of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by American's retaliation and overcame great odds to gain an education and achieve academic success. His education was interruped by the devastation caused by the atom bomb. In 1956, he found employment as an assistant to Professor Yoshimasa Hirata at Nagoya University. It was while working for Professor Hirata that he was assigned to a daunting task of finding out what made the crushed remains of a type of mollusc (Jap. umi-hotaru, lit. "sea-firefly", Vargula hilgendorfii) glow when moistened with water. This lead Shimomura to discover the protein behind this and he was able to publish his findings in the Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan in a paper entitled Crystalline Cypridina luciferin. which caught the attention of Professor Frank Johnson at Princeton University. Frank Johnson successfully recruited Shimomura to work with him. Before Shimomura left Nagoya University, Professor Hirata ensured that Shimomura's accomplishments were aptly recognized by getting the University to honor him by awarding a PhD degree.

Study

Dr. Shimomura worked in the Department of Biology at Princeton where he worked with Frank Johnson to study the Jellyfish Aequorea victoria. Their work culminated in the discovery of the proteins aequorin and green fluorescent protein (GFP); the work for which he would eventually be awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry.

Family

His wife, Akemi, whom Shimomura met at Nagasaki University, is also an organic chemist and 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 an associate professor of literature at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature.

Awards

• Pearse Prize (2004)
• Emile Chamot Award (2005)
• Asahi Prize (2006)
• Nobel Prize (2008)

Sources

• Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2008
• Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence -Harvard University Press