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

Biography

Shimomura was born in Fukuchiyama, Kyoto, Japan, in 1928. He grew up in Manchukuo (now Manchuria, China) and Osaka, Japan, while his father worked as an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army. Later, his family moved to Isahaya, Nagasaki, which is 25 kilometers from where the atomic bomb was dropped on the city in August 1945. At age 16, Shimomura heard the plane Bockscar before the bomb exploded. The bright flash from the explosion blinded him for about thirty seconds, and he was later covered in radioactive rain from the bomb. Over the next 11 years, he faced many challenges but earned an education and achieved academic success.

After World War II, Japan was in ruins, and education was very difficult to access. Although he later said he was not interested in the subject, Shimomura enrolled in the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Nagasaki Medical College (now Nagasaki University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences). The campus had been destroyed by the atomic bomb, so the pharmacy school moved to a temporary location near Shimomura’s home. This chance opportunity led him to study and pursue a career in science. He earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy in 1951 and worked as a lab assistant until 1955.

A teacher at Nagasaki helped Shimomura find a job as an assistant to Professor Yoshimasa Hirata at Nagoya University in 1956. While working with Professor Hirata, Shimomura earned a master’s degree in organic chemistry in 1958 and a doctorate in organic chemistry in 1960 at Nagoya University. Professor Hirata gave Shimomura a difficult task: to find out why the crushed remains of a type of crustacean (called Vargula hilgendorfii in Japanese) glowed when wet. Shimomura discovered the protein responsible for this glowing effect and published his findings in the Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan under the title "Crystalline Cypridina luciferin." This research caught the attention of Professor Frank Johnson at Princeton University, who invited Shimomura to join him in 1960.

Studies

Shimomura worked in the biology department at Princeton University with Professor Johnson to study the glow-in-the-dark jellyfish Aequorea victoria. They collected these jellyfish during summers at the Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington. In 1962, their research led to the discovery of two important proteins in A. victoria: aequorin and green fluorescent protein (GFP). For this discovery, Shimomura received one-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 worked together on research projects with him. Their son, Tsutomu Shimomura, is an expert in computer security and helped catch Kevin Mitnick. Their daughter, Sachi Shimomura, is the head of the undergraduate studies program in the English Department at Virginia Commonwealth University and wrote the books Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature.

Recognition

• 2004 – Received the Pearse Prize from the Royal Microscopical Society
• 2005 – Won the Emile Chamot Award
• 2006 – Received the Asahi Prize
• 2008 – Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; also received the Order of Culture and the Person of Cultural Merit
• 2012 – Received the Golden Goose Award
• 2013 – Became a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• 2018 – Posthumously awarded the Junior third rank

Selected publications

• Bioluminescence: Chemical Principles and Methods (Revised Edition). World Scientific Publishing Company. 2012. ISBN 978-981-4366-08-3.
• Learning from Jellyfish: The Path to the Nobel Prize [in Japanese]. Nagasaki Literature. 2010. ISBN 978-4-88851-157-5.

• Yasanuga, Shungo; Shimomura, Osamu (July 1954). Studies on Inorganic Chromatography (Part 6): Apparatus for Paper Electrochromatography. Journal of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan, 74(7): 778–780. DOI: 10.1248/yakushi1947.74.7_778. ISSN 0031-6903.
• Shimomura, Osamu (1955). Study on Oral Electrophoresis (Part 3): Concentration-Magnetic Mobility Curves in Formation of Poorly Soluble Salts and Complex Ions. Chemistry Journal of Japan, 76(9): 973–977. DOI: 10.1246/nikkashi1948.76.973. ISSN 0369-5387.
• Shimomura, Osamu (1955). Study on Oral Electrophoresis of Aniline Derivatives and Phenol Derivatives. Chemistry Journal of Japan, 76(3): 277–281. DOI: 10.1246/nikkashi1948.76.277.
• Hirata, Yoshimasa; Eguchi, Shoji; Shimomura, Osamu (October 17, 1959). Structure of Sea Firefly Luciferin. Proceedings of the Symposium on Natural Organic Compounds, 3: 83–93. DOI: 10.24496/tennenyuki.3.0_83.
• Shimomura, Osamu (1960). Structure of Sea Firefly Luciferin (Part 2–3) (Part 2): Properties and Molecular Formula of Sea Firefly Luciferin. Chemistry Journal of Japan, 81(1): 179–182. DOI: 10.1246/nikkashi1948.81.179.
• Shimomura, Osamu (1960). Structure of Sea Firefly Luciferin (Parts 2–3) (Part 3): Predicted Structures of Sea Firefly Luciferin and Hydroluciferin. Chemistry Journal of Japan, 81(1): 182–185. DOI: 10.1246/nikkashi1948.81.182.
• Is Green Fluorescent Protein GFP a Godsend? Acta Anatomica Nipponica, 85(3). September 1, 2010. Pages 99–106.