www.asiachem.news December 2021 | 111 the chemistry of enzymes, and was appointed assistant professor in 1908 at his alma mater. In spite of his seemingly smooth career development, Kita was not happy at Tokyo because of the discrepancy between his own philosophy and the teaching policy of Tokyo’s Department of Applied Chemistry. Whereas Kita believed that industrial chemists should thoroughly understand the basics of pure chemistry and have the ability to do basic research, the chemical component in applied chemistry teaching at Tokyo was diluted, so to speak, as Takamatsu and Nakazawa blended chemical and practical machine-operating aspects of the chemical industry to design a curriculum suited to the training of chemical technologists (cf. the previous section on Meiji Japan’s practical chemists). Kita’s move in 1916 to the Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto Imperial University, together with his research appointment at the RIKEN in 1917 (most probably based on a recommendation from Sakurai), opened the way to realize his ideal. His experience of working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with Arthur Amos Noyes (1866-1936) during his overseas study in 1918-1921 reaffirmed his conviction and arguably taught him the relevance of physics and mathematics to chemistry, for Noyes was a physical chemist and a vocal advocate of the importance of basic scientific education and research in an engineering school.68 Kita also probably learned fromwhat Noyes’ rival at MIT, industrial chemist William H. Walker (1869-1964), was doing to establish a Department of Chemical Engineering in 1922: Kita brought teaching materials about the unit operation, the key concept of chemical engineering, from MIT to Kyoto.69 Once he resumed his teaching at Kyoto and was promoted to full professor in 1921, Kita moved quickly to realize his vision of “To aim at the application, study the basic.” The first is the curricular reform to lay more emphasis on basic scientific subjects like inorganic, organic and physical chemistry, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In so doing, Kita enabled students of the Department of Industrial Chemistry to enroll in scientific courses of Kyoto’s Faculty of Science,70 including the Department of Chemistry, by working closely with professors there. One of the chemistry professors of Kyoto’s Department of Chemistry then was physical chemist Horiba Shinkichi 堀場信吉 (1886-1968). A graduate from the Department of Chemistry at Kyoto in 1910 taught by Ōsaka Yūkichi 大幸勇吉 (1867-1950), another student of Sakurai and Ostwald, Horiba was appointed assistant professor in 1913 and full professor in 1924 at Kyoto’s Department of Chemistry. Horiba pursued research on the rates of a variety of reactions using the thermal analysis method and built a research tradition in chemical kinetics at Kyoto and indeed the whole field of physical chemistry. His leading position in physical chemistry in Japan is exemplified by Horiba’s editorship (co-editorship with Sameshima at Tokyo from 1939) of Butsuri kagaku no shimpo (“Review of Physical Chemistry of Japan”) launched in 1926 by the Horiba laboratory at Kyoto.71 From the Horiba school emerged quite a few kineticists of international standing. Ree Taikyue 李泰圭 (Ri Taikei in Japanese reading, 1902-92), of the “Ree-Eyring theory” (1955) fame, played a pioneering role in Japan, as well as in his native Korea after World War II, in introducing quantum chemistry into chemical kinetics.72 Satō Shin 佐藤伸 (b. 1928), a student of Horiba’s student Shida Shōji 志田正二 (1912-2001) who taught at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, published in 1955 a substantial modification of the London-Eyring-Polanyi (LEP) method73 of calculating the potential energy reaction surface of bimolecular systems based on a simplified quantum mechanical equation (the London equation), which is now recognized as the LEPS method.74 Simultaneously with departmental curricular reforms, Kita established a research school encompassing fermentation (his original research field), textile, fuel, and rubber. This broadening of his research horizon reflected Kita’s growing sense of mission to contribute to Japan’s “autarky” in the 1930s and 1940s in the context of Japan’s worsening international relations leading to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the Pacific War in 1941. In this process Kita attracted various talents. Sakurada Ichirō 櫻田一郎 (1904-86), for example, was sent by Kita to Germany and spent two years in 19291931 with Kurt Hess (1888-1961), who was a cellulose chemist and the main opponent of the macromolecular theory of polymers postulated by Hermann Staudinger (1881-65).75 Sakurada first joined the polymer controversy in his mentor’s favor but later converted to the macromolecular theory and became a pioneer in polymer and textile chemistry in Japan. Sakurada invented Japan’s first synthetic fiber, vinylon, with Korean chemist Ri Sung-gi 李升基 (Ri Shōki in Japanese reading, 190596) and many other collaborators in 1939.76 Kodama Shinjirō 兒玉信次郎 (1906-96), the most loyal supporter of Kita’s vision, was an industrial chemist with working experiences in chemical factories. He was sent by Kita to Germany and worked with Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) on research in chemical kinetics and learned quantum mechanics in 19301932. Through these experiences Kodama turned his mentor’s vision into a concrete research methodology, i.e. solving technical problems “first by theories as much as possible and then by experimental measuring if no theory is available for them.”77 Kita and Kodama were also aware of the needs to turn their laboratory findings into factory products. They put a considerable effort to solving the chemical engineering problem of scaling-up in the pilot study of synthetic petroleum production by the Fischer-Tropsch process before moving to the factory scale during World War II.78 These developments were recognized with the establishment of the Department of Fuel Chemistry in 1939 and the Department of Textile Chemistry in 1941, both at Kyoto’s Faculty of Engineering. Fukui Kenichi was another talent attracted to Kita’s vision of “To aim at the application, study the basic” and quite literally a product of the Kyoto school without any experience in overseas study.79 A distant relative of Kita coming from the same Nara Prefecture, Fukui chose chemistry as his major and entered the Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto in 1938 following Kita’s advice that “if you are good at mathematics, study chemistry.” Considering quantum mechanics as the basis of chemistry and the best tool to “mathematize” it, he spent much time in his undergraduate days teaching himself quantum mechanics by reading library holdings at Kyoto’s Department of Physics. Fukui later deepened his knowledge of quantum mechanics with Kodama, Fukui’s supervisor at the graduate school, who had brought many up-to-date reading materials on quantum mechanics and statistical thermodynamics from Germany. Figure 10. Fukui Kenichi In: Yamabe, Tokio (ed.) (1982). Nōberu shō kagakusha Fukui Ken-ichi: Kagaku to watashi (Kyoto: Kagaku Dōjin). Courtesy of the publisher, Kagaku Dōjin Another key to Fukui’s success as quantum chemist was his familiarity with the reactions of hydrocarbons, both theoretically and experimentally. That he gained from his undergraduate thesis advisor and later colleague at the Department of Fuel Chemistry, synthetic organic chemist Shingū Haruo 新宮春男 (1913-88) and from his wartime research experience at the Army’s Fuel Research Institute in 1941-45. Fukui was appointed lecturer in 1943
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