www.asiachem.news December 2021 | 107 with August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818-92) between 1870 and 1884. Back in Japan, Nagai taught at the Department of Pharmacy, College of Medicine, Tokyo Imperial University and made great contributions to pharmaceutical chemistry both by his research (the most important of which was the isolation of ephedrine, the active ingredient of drugs for asthma, from the Chinese herbal medicine Ephedra vulgar is) and his involvement wi th the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (established in 1880) as its long-term president and a couple of pharmaceutical companies as a technical advisor. In his later life Nagai technically supported indigo dye manufacturers in his native Tokushima Prefecture.25 Takamine Jōkichi 高峰譲吉 (1854-1922) was an industrial chemist trained with Edward Divers at the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokyo. After working as an engineer at the Ministry of Agr icul ture and Commerce, Takamine established the Tokyo Artificial Fertilizer Company and then moved to the United States to establish an independent industrial laboratory. In the United States Takamine first undertook the project of applying Japanese brewing techniques to whiskey brewing and to the development of digestive enzyme marketed as “Taka Diastase.” He is best-known internationally for the crystallization with Uenaka Keizō 上中啓三 (1876-1960), a student of Nagai, and commercialization of adrenaline, a hormone used as a hemostatic and cardiotonic agent.26 Figure 4: Takamine Jōkichi Courtesy of the Science History Institute, Philadelphia Takamatsu Toyokichi 高松豊吉 (1852-1937) andNakazawa Iwata 中澤岩太(1858-1943), two alumni of Tokyo University and former students of Atkinson, contributed to the establishment of applied chemistry teaching at the College of Engineering, Tokyo Imperial University.27 After graduation from Tokyo University, Takamatsu studied with chemists Henry Enfield Roscoe (1833-1915)28 and Carl Schorlemmer (183492), and chemical technologist Watson Smith (1845-1920) at Owens College Manchester (today’s University of Manchester) and with Hofmann at the University of Berlin. Nakazawa used his time abroad mainly inspecting various chemical factories in Germany to observe the actual working of the chemical industry. For Tokyo’s Department of Applied Chemistry, Takamatsu and Nakazawa blended chemical and practical machine-operating components to design a curriculum suited to the training of chemical technologists much needed in the Meiji period. They also gave technical advice to government and private chemical companies in their respective specialties of applied organic chemistry (especially dyeing and dye manufacturing) and inorganic chemistry (especially alkali-acid manufacture and pottery). Suzuki Umetarō 鈴木梅太郎 (1874-1943) belonged to a later generation of Japanese chemists. He was trained at the College of Agriculture, Tokyo Imperial University with Kozai Yoshinao 古在由直 (1864-1934), Kellner’s student in agricultural chemistry. Kozai became well known for his analysis of soil from rice paddies contaminated by copper-containing streams from nearby Ashio copper mines in Tochigi Prefecture, which caused serious damage to agriculture and fishery.29 After overseas study with Emil Fischer (1852-1919) at the University of Berlin in 1903-1906, Suzuki was appointed full professor at his alma mater and published in 1911 his discovery of what he called oryzanin (today’s Vitamin B) from rice bran, the deficiency of which caused beriberi, a life-threatening disease that especially plagued the Imperial Japanese Army. Suzuki thereafter successfully undertook other practical research projects such as extracting vitamins and other nutrients from natural products and the synthesis of sake, a Japanese alcoholic beverage, mainly at RIKEN, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research established in 1917 (cf. the next section on Sakurai).30 The above paragraphs described only part of many early Japanese contributions to applied chemistry broadly construed. That being said, Japanese chemistry is not all about applied chemistry, and there were also important developments in pure chemistry, or the ideal of chemical research for its own sake, in Japan. Together with Divers, Sakurai Jōji 櫻井錠二 (1858-1939) was responsible for nurturing the idea of pure chemistry in Japan as one of the founding professors of the Department of Chemistry at the College of Science, Tokyo Imperial University. Sakurai Jōji: Pioneer in Pure Chemistry, Scientific Diplomat, and Institution Builder Sakurai studied at the Tokyo Kaisei School and its antecedents between 1871 and 1876.31 As one of his chemistry teachers was Atkinson, a student of Alexander William Williamson (1824-1904) at University College London (UCL), it is natural that Sakurai chose to do overseas study at UCL with Williamson. This choice had a tremendous impact on Sakurai’s character formation as a scholar. First, under the influence of Williamson, Sakurai came to believe that pure science should be at the core of university curricula. According toWilliamson, education in pure science would discipline students’ minds and hands through the systematic learning of theoretical principles and by laboratory training. He further argued that these trainings in pure science would provide a sound basis for subsequent employment in a wide variety of science-related fields such as pharmacy, medicine, agriculture, metallurgy, manufacturing and teaching.32 It is important to note that Williamson and Sakurai’s idea of “pure” science was not detached from the concern of their colleagues in “practical” chemistry outlined in the previous section. It was more about the role of university education and what should be taught there. Figure 5. Sakurai Jōji. Courtesy of the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of History Second, in starting his career as a “pure” chemist as the founding professor of the Department of Chemistry at the College of Science, Tokyo Imperial University, he chose organic chemistry and the emerging field of physical chemistry as his specialties and promoted physics and mathematics in departmental teaching. Williamson’s own penchant for chemical theories and physical chemistry such as the three-dimensional imaging of molecules, reaction mechanism and thermochemistry revealed itself in his research on Williamson ether synthesis and was reflected in Sakurai’s research interests as well.33 Sakurai’s research outputs include the modification of Beckmann’s method of measuring molecular weights by the rise in boiling points of solutions and the structural investigation of glycine
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