6 | December 2021 www.facs.website The Chemical Society of Striving for Chemical Sciences and for a Sustainable Human Society Mitsuo Sawamoto Executive Director, The Born in Japan (1951), he received his B.Sc. (1974), M.Sc. (1976), and Ph.D. (1979) in polymer chemistry from Kyoto University. After postdoctoral research at the University of Akron, USA (1980–81), he joined the Department of Polymer Chemistry, Kyoto University. In 2017, upon retiring from Kyoto, he joined the Frontier Research Institute at Chubu University. He serves as an Executive Program Director at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Member of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), Executive Director of the Chemical Society of Japan, and Chair of the International Organizing Committee Pacifichem 2021. He has published over 540 research papers, 50 reviews and book chapters, and 46 patents (with nearly 25,000 citations and an h-index of 71) in the areas of precision cationic and radical polymerizations, metal polymerization catalysts, precision synthesis of designed functional polymers, and sequence regulation in chain-growth polymerization. His long list of Awards and Honors includes the Arthur K. Doolittle Award of the ACS, the Macro Group UK Medal, the SPSJ Award for Outstanding Achievement in Polymer Science and Technology, the NIMS Award on Strong Future of Soft Materials, the 2015 Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon (presented by Emperor Akihito and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (USA). Brief History The Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ), with a long history extending over 140 years and a membership of ca. 24,000, is one of the world’s largest, most active, and internationally recognized societies in chemistry. The history of CSJ dates back to 1878 (just ten years after the Meiji Restoration, where Japan was reborn), when about twenty motivated and enthusiastic young scholars launched a small organization, the Chemical Society, in Tokyo for the advancement of chemistry. In the following year the embryonic society was renamed The Tokyo Chemical Society and eventually the current name, The Chemical Society of Japan, in 1921. In 1948, shortly after the World War II, the then CSJ merged with the Society of Chemical Industry, founded in 1898, into an integrated organization with the same name: ”The Chemical Society of Japan”. The integration was in part symbolic in defining the renewed CSJ’s perspective: CSJ consists of comparable numbers of individual members from both academia and industry along with supporting company affiliates; its activities cover virtually all segments of pure and applied chemistry along with diverse interdisciplinary areas now extended to physics, biology, medicine, materials, and advanced technology. Since 2011 CSJ is a public interest incorporated association, a nonprofit tax-exempt organization legitimately certified and under the jurisdiction of the Japanese Cabinet.
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