2008 Nobel Prize Winner Shimomura Dies at 90

October 22, 2018

Nagasaki- Osamu Shimomura, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died of old age in the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki on Friday morning, Nagasaki University said Sunday. He was 90.

Shimomura shared the prestigious prize with two U.S. scientists for the discovery of green fluorescent protein, or GFP, which has made it possible to visualize proteins in living cells.

He graduated in 1951 from Nagasaki Medical College Specialized School of Pharmaceutics, which was remade into Nagasaki University's School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

After staying at Nagoya University in central Japan and Princeton University in the United States, he became senior researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole in the U.S. state of Massachusetts in 1982.

He retired in 2001 but continued his research in the United States.

He worked on research into luminescent creatures that he began during his days at Nagoya University.

In summer 1961, he collected about 10,000 jellyfish at Friday Harbor in the state of Washington to extract luminescent substance. He discovered GFP during the work.

Other scientists, including the 2008 Nobel Prize cowinners, continued research into the substance, developing techniques to use it as a luminescent marker to watch the movements and interactions of tagged proteins in living cells.

Cell imaging using GFP is used to detect cancer and study how brain cells are formed, as well as for many other purposes.

Shimomura, a native of Fukuchiyama, Kyoto Prefecture, saw the flash of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki and felt its blast as a wartime evacuee living in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture. He said he was also exposed to so-called black rain, which contained radioactive fallout.

He referred to his atomic bomb-related experience in his Nobel lecture in 2008. In 2015, he returned from the United States to attend the 61st Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs for a world free of nuclear weapons, held in the city of Nagasaki. Jiji Press