The Most Famous

CHEMISTS from Japan

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This page contains a list of the greatest Japanese Chemists. The pantheon dataset contains 602 Chemists, 11 of which were born in Japan. This makes Japan the birth place of the 9th most number of Chemists behind Russia, and Switzerland.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Japanese Chemists of all time. This list of famous Japanese Chemists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Japanese Chemists.

Photo of Akira Suzuki

1. Akira Suzuki (b. 1930)

With an HPI of 64.78, Akira Suzuki is the most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 60 different languages on wikipedia.

Akira Suzuki (鈴木 章, Suzuki Akira, born September 12, 1930) is a Japanese chemist and Nobel Prize Laureate (2010), who first published the Suzuki reaction, the organic reaction of an aryl- or vinyl-boronic acid with an aryl- or vinyl-halide catalyzed by a palladium(0) complex, in 1979.

Photo of Osamu Shimomura

2. Osamu Shimomura (1928 - 2018)

With an HPI of 61.17, Osamu Shimomura is the 2nd most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 60 different languages.

Osamu Shimomura (下村 脩, Shimomura Osamu, August 27, 1928 – October 19, 2018) was a Japanese organic chemist and marine biologist, and professor emeritus at Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and Boston University School of Medicine. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein (GFP) with two American scientists: Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Tsien of the University of California-San Diego.

Photo of Kenichi Fukui

3. Kenichi Fukui (1918 - 1998)

With an HPI of 61.00, Kenichi Fukui is the 3rd most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 57 different languages.

Kenichi Fukui (福井 謙一, Fukui Ken'ichi, October 4, 1918 – January 9, 1998) was a Japanese chemist. He became the first person of East Asian ancestry to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry when he won the 1981 prize with Roald Hoffmann, for their independent investigations into the mechanisms of chemical reactions. Fukui's prize-winning work focused on the role of frontier orbitals in chemical reactions: specifically that molecules share loosely bonded electrons which occupy the frontier orbitals, that is, the Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) and the Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO).

Photo of Satoshi Ōmura

4. Satoshi Ōmura (b. 1935)

With an HPI of 60.84, Satoshi Ōmura is the 4th most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 52 different languages.

Satoshi Ōmura (大村 智, Ōmura Satoshi, [oːmɯɾa saꜜtoɕi]; born 12 July 1935) is a Japanese biochemist. He is known for the discovery and development of hundreds of pharmaceuticals originally occurring in microorganisms. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell for their role in the discovery of avermectins and ivermectin. the world's first endectocide and a safe and highly effective microfilaricide. It is believed that the large molecular size of ivermectin prevents it from crossing the blood/aqueous humour barrier, and renders the drug an important treatment of helminthically-derived blindness.

Photo of Hideki Shirakawa

5. Hideki Shirakawa (b. 1936)

With an HPI of 60.38, Hideki Shirakawa is the 5th most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 56 different languages.

Hideki Shirakawa (白川 英樹, Shirakawa Hideki, born August 20, 1936) is a Japanese chemist, engineer, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tsukuba and Zhejiang University. He is best known for his discovery of conductive polymers. He was co-recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Alan MacDiarmid and Alan Heeger.

Photo of Ryōji Noyori

6. Ryōji Noyori (b. 1938)

With an HPI of 59.91, Ryōji Noyori is the 6th most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 59 different languages.

Ryōji Noyori (野依 良治, Noyori Ryōji, born September 3, 1938) is a Japanese chemist. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001, Noyori shared a half of the prize with William S. Knowles for the study of chirally catalyzed hydrogenations; the second half of the prize went to K. Barry Sharpless for his study in chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions (Sharpless epoxidation).

Photo of Kikunae Ikeda

7. Kikunae Ikeda (1864 - 1936)

With an HPI of 59.62, Kikunae Ikeda is the 7th most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Kikunae Ikeda (池田 菊苗, Ikeda Kikunae, 8 October 1864 – 3 May 1936) was a Japanese chemist and Tokyo Imperial University professor of chemistry who, in 1908, uncovered the chemical basis of a taste he named umami. It is one of the five basic tastes along with sweet, bitter, sour and salty.

Photo of Kaoru Ishikawa

8. Kaoru Ishikawa (1915 - 1989)

With an HPI of 59.41, Kaoru Ishikawa is the 8th most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.

Kaoru Ishikawa (石川 馨, Ishikawa Kaoru, July 13, 1915 – April 16, 1989) was a Japanese organizational theorist and a professor in the engineering faculty at the University of Tokyo who was noted for his quality management innovations. He is considered a key figure in the development of quality initiatives in Japan, particularly the quality circle. He is best known outside Japan for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram (also known as the fishbone diagram), often used in the analysis of industrial processes.

Photo of Akira Yoshino

9. Akira Yoshino (b. 1948)

With an HPI of 58.80, Akira Yoshino is the 9th most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 55 different languages.

Akira Yoshino (吉野 彰, Yoshino Akira, born 30 January 1948) is a Japanese chemist. He is a fellow of Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya. He created the first safe, production-viable lithium-ion battery, which became used widely in cellular phones and notebook computers. Yoshino was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 alongside M. Stanley Whittingham and John B. Goodenough.

Photo of Koichi Tanaka

10. Koichi Tanaka (b. 1959)

With an HPI of 54.17, Koichi Tanaka is the 10th most famous Japanese Chemist.  His biography has been translated into 56 different languages.

Koichi Tanaka (田中 耕一, Tanaka Kōichi, born August 3, 1959) is a Japanese electrical engineer who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 for developing a novel method for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules with John Bennett Fenn and Kurt Wüthrich (the latter for work in NMR spectroscopy).

People

Pantheon has 12 people classified as Japanese chemists born between 1854 and 1959. Of these 12, 7 (58.33%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Japanese chemists include Akira Suzuki, Satoshi Ōmura, and Hideki Shirakawa. The most famous deceased Japanese chemists include Osamu Shimomura, Kenichi Fukui, and Kikunae Ikeda. As of April 2024, 1 new Japanese chemists have been added to Pantheon including Takamine Jōkichi.

Living Japanese Chemists

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Deceased Japanese Chemists

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Newly Added Japanese Chemists (2024)

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Overlapping Lives

Which Chemists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 5 most globally memorable Chemists since 1700.