108 | December 2021 www.facs.website (glycocol) by means of measuring its electric conductivity, both falling within the realms of organic and physical chemistry.34 Amid his busy student life at UCL, Sakurai also enjoyed a cultural life in London, visiting his friends there, reading Victorian novels and poetry, watching Shakespeare’s plays, and visiting parliamentary debates. He thereby gained near-native fluency in English and a strong command of French and German and underwent a process of indoctrination into British and more general Western culture, thereby laying the foundation of his later career as a “scientific diplomat.” Sakurai frequently became a Japanese representative attending international conferences and participating in the management of international organizations in the twentieth century. For example, he served the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), established in 1919, as a vice-president twice, first in 1923-25 and again in 1928-30.35 It signifies Japan’s surprisingly early entry to international chemistry, and his “diplomacy” played a crucial role in it. The discussion of Sakurai’s life would not be complete without mentioning his outstanding roles as an “institution builder.” Scarcity of research opportunities for his students had been a major issue for him since he was appointed professor at Tokyo in the 1880s, and the outbreak of World War I gave him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (“a blessing from heaven” according to him) to realize his long-cherished wish to promote scientific research in Japan. Building on Takamine’s pioneering activities toward the establishment of a “Nation’s Scientific Research Institute” in 1913, Sakurai collaborated with Takamine, Takamatsu and entrepreneur Shibusawa Ei ichi 澁澤榮一(1840-1931) to tirelessly advance this cause and became the foremost institution builder for Japanese science between the 1910s and 1930s, creating scientific research organizations such as RIKEN (Rikagaku Kenkyūsho, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research established in 1917) and GAKUSHIN (Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science established in 1932).36 These research institutes and funding bodies immensely benefited the following generations of Japanese chemists, including his own students. Pure Chemists from Tokyo’s Department of Chemistry and their Students Tokyo’s Department of Chemistry under the leadership of Divers and Sakurai produced a sizeable number of pure chemists. Here we introduce only some of the most important students from there, namely: Ikeda Kikunae 池田菊苗 (1864-1936), Katayama Masao 片山正夫 (1877-1961), Ogawa Masataka 小川正孝 (1865-1930), and Maj ima Rikō 眞島利行 (1874-1962).37 Ikeda started his career as a physical chemist. He first studied with Sakurai at Tokyo’s Department’s Chemistry and later did an overseas study under Wilhelm Ostwald (18531932) at the University of Leipzig between 1899 and 1901. Upon returning to Japan, he became full professor at his alma mater and held this position until 1923. Ikeda was also appointed head of the chemistry section of RIKEN when it was established in 1917 and was one of its chief researchers in 1923-1932. Figure 6: Ikeda Kikunae. In: Ikeda Kikunae hakushi tsuiokuroku (Tokyo, 1956) Ikeda’s research topics in physical chemistry would be broadly categorized into chemical kinetics (including catalysts) and the theory of solutions,38 and he was also an active proselytizer for Ostwald’s energetics, especially in the educational and philosophical circles in Japan.39 Today, however, Ikeda is well known internationally first and foremost as the inventor of the flavor enhancer, l-monosodium glutamate marketed as Ajinomoto and the originator of the umami concept in the science of taste.40 Just like his mentor Ostwald, who invented his namesake process to turn ammonia into nitric acid, Ikeda is the kind of chemists moving flexibly between pure and applied chemistry. The most important student of Ikeda in physical chemistry was Sameshima Jitsusaburō 鮫島實三郎 (1890-1973).41 Graduated from Tokyo’s Department of Chemistry in 1914, he originally tackled the research topic of the vapor pressure of binary mixture of solutions under Ikeda’s guidance. During overseas study in 1917-21, Sameshima worked with Theodore W. Richards (1868-1928) at Harvard University, Frederick G. Donnan (1870-1956) at UCL, and Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes (1853-1926) at Leiden University. He was then appointed assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Tohoku Imperial University in 1922. He succeeded Ikeda as professor of physical chemistry at Tokyo’s Department of Chemistry in 1925 and stayed in this office until his retirement in 1951. Publishing the well-received textbook, Butsuri kagaku j ikken hō (“Experimental Methods in Physical Chemistry”) in 1927, Sameshima was a superb experimentalist and worked broadly on the study of physical properties of materials (called bussei kenkyū in Japanese), especially in colloid and surface chemistry. His research was centered on gas absorption by porous materials such as charcoal and dehydrated zeolite, which impacted colloid chemist James William McBain (18821953) in formulating the concept of “molecular sieve,” and the dynamic phenomena of colloids such as the formation of monomolecular film, viscosity, lubricity, and foamability which made him a Japanese pioneer in rheology. Sameshima was succeeded by one of his students, Akamatsu Hideo 赤松秀雄 (191088) who published an important research in Nature on the electric conductivities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with his student, Inokuchi Hiroo 井口洋夫 (1927-2014) in 1954 that led to the concept of “organic semiconductor.”42 Katayama was another chemistry student at Tokyo who chose physical chemistry as his specialty under Sakurai’s influence.43 Graduated from the Department of Chemistry at Tokyo in 1900, Katayama studied overseas at the University of Zurich with Richard Lorenz (1863-1929) and at the University of Berlin, Germany, with Walter Nernst (1864-1941) and Max Bodenstein (1871-1942) between 1905 and 1909. He was appointed the first professor of physical chemistry at the newly established Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai in 1911, succeeded Sakurai as the professor of physical chemistry at Tokyo in 1919 and stayed in this office until his retirement in 1938 with an extra position as chief researcher at RIKEN. Following Sakurai’s pro-atomistic view, Katayama positively adopted atomism as a working hypothesis and published an influential textbook of physical chemistry based on chemical thermodynamics in Japanese, Kagaku honron (“Fundamentals of Chemistry”) in 1914. Like Sameshima, Katayama specialized in surface and colloid chemistry but chose to do theoretical investigations based on his molecular interpretation of thermodynamics and the quantum theory. His most important research outcome was “Katayama’s equation” published in 1916, an equation describing the relationship between the surface tension and temperature of liquids. Katayama trained quite a few Japanese physical chemists who became internationally known in a variety of fields like colloids, catalysts, and molecular structures. Mizushima San-ichirō 水島三一郎 (1899-1983), for example, first undertook research, while working with Katayama at Tokyo as a student, on the dispersion of radio waves by glycerin
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU2MA==