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Osamu Shimomura has never forgotten the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. He was a teenager and worked in a factory there when the brighter light than the sun flooded the windows. "We were blinded for about 30 seconds," he recalled six decades after the 1945 strike. "Then, about 40 seconds after the flash, a loud sound and a sudden change in atmospheric pressure followed."
As he headed for his home about 25 km from the epicenter, a black rain fell on him, darkening his white shirt into a dirty gray. His grandmother washed him in a bath, possibly saving him, he thought, from any lingering radiation.
This mix of incredible scientific powers of destruction did not deter Shimomura, who died in Nagasaki on October 19th at age 90, from becoming a scientist. In 2008, Professor Emeritus of the BU School of Medicine shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP) in jellyfish. Other winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Y. Tsine of the University of California at San Diego, have developed cell research techniques using the proteins identified by Shimomura.
BU President Robert A. Brown said that when Shimomura arrived in the BU the following year, to read his Nobel Prize presentation, he was able to conduct research on cancer metastases, as well as from other studies in fields such as ecology and chemistry.
"Dr. Shimomura was a brilliant scientist devoted to exploring a very basic observation that had a remarkable impact on life science research worldwide, "Brown said.
Shimomura was also a former senior scientist at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory. After learning of his death, the laboratory lowered his flag to honor his memory.
Shimomura taught at the Faculty of Medicine the year following his Nobel victory. Photo by BU Photography
He arrived at the BU in 1982 as a professor of physiology. And during his presentation at the Nobel BU, the wiped scientist jokingly explained that he had not been "a very good teacher", having come to campus only a few times in those years. He retired from the BU when he won the Nobel Prize, and the University immediately awarded him Distinguished Member status.
In addition to his scientific achievements, David Atkinson, professor of MED and holder of the chair of physiology and biophysics (MED) and holder of a chair of physiology and biophysics, was distinguished in 2009: "He spoke very gently from Nagasaki. A humble man, yes. (In an autobiographical essay for the Nobel Prize, Shimomura wrote: "The Nagasaki bomb was of a different and much more powerful type than the Hiroshima bomb." Even though the use of the Hiroshima bomb was justifiable for precipitating the end of the war, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later was clearly a testing of new weapons.It can not be justified. ")
Raymond Stephens, professor emeritus of physiology and biophysics at the MED Department, recalls that when his colleague won the Nobel Prize, he saw a photo of the winner and his family "standing together at the seaside … picking up nets and buckets by hand. They spent many summers there picking jellyfish. Akemi, his wife and his second pair of hands, has always been at his side, a true partner in all his businesses (…). He had a deeply human side. "
"It was really a family member," says Osamu Sakai, professor of radiology at MED.
Shimomura made his award-winning discovery years before taking office and getting the Nobel Prize. This award earned her to be "one of the very select group of scientists whose biomedical research work is recognized" at such a high level, said Karen Antman, dean of MED and Provost from the Medical Campus.
"Thanks to her discovery and the subsequent work of her colleagues, researchers can track the expression of proteins and biological processes such as the spread of cancer cells," she says. "We are grateful for his many contributions to science and for his presence in the faculty."
Son of a Japanese army captain, Shimomura lived part of his childhood in Manchuria, where his father had been stationed during his occupation by Japan in the 1930s. The future Nobel laureate has stated that he had been rejected by three colleges before being admitted in 1948 to the Nagasaki Pharmacy College, which had had to relocate to a barracks after being destroyed by the bombing.
After graduation, he went to work at Nagoya University, where he also obtained a master's degree and a doctorate. He began to study light-emitting properties in a Japanese crustacean species, successfully purifying and crystallizing the compound that helped to produce the glow.
"Since the end of the war, my life was dark," writes Shimomura in his essay on the Nobel Prize, "but it gave me hope for my future." This hope was well founded, as Princeton University, who was studying jellyfish, recruited him as a researcher in 1960. In 1962, he managed to extract two proteins from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, found off the waters of the island. Washington State: Aequorin and PFM; the last becomes green when it is exposed to the first.
Holders of an honorary degree from the BU in 2010: Eric Holder (from the left), Wafaa El-Sadr, Shimomura, William Coleman and Edward Albee. Photo by BU Photography
After years of summer travel to Washington – on these trips, he and his colleagues have usually harvested 3,000 of these tiny jellyfish a day – along with his team, who mapped the luminescence function in the 1970s. left Princeton after joining the MED faculty.
Shimomura has received many honors. In 2008, he received the Order of Culture, the highest distinction awarded annually by the Emperor of Japan. He was one of three winners of the first Golden Goose Awards in 2012. And in 2013 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Shimomura is survived by his wife and two children. The university awarded him an honorary title in 2010.
BU has a Nobel laureate, Sheldon Glashow, Professor of Mathematics and Science Arthur G. B. Metcalf, Professor of Physics at the College of Arts and Sciences.
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