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Koichi Tanaka
Scientist and Nobel Prize winner, Shimadzu Corp

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December 03 / January 04

Koichi Tanaka has sent shockwaves throughout Japan, emerging from the obscurity of an engineering firm to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2002. The 44-year-old engineer is an unconventional Nobel Chemistry Laureate, having no degree in chemistry — but in electronic engineering — and being part of no academic establishment. He has worked for Shimadzu Corp in Kyoto all his life and that is where he has carried out all research, including the mass spectrometer for organic compound analysis that won the Nobel committee’s recognition.
Not surprisingly, Tanaka immediately became an iconoclastic hero and a source of inspiration to millions of Japanese disillusioned by the rigidity of their society. His popularity extends even to schoolchildren, who recently voted him “the most impressive man”, pushing David Beckham to second place. Tanaka is a modest man — which is another reason for his popularity in Japan. When the Swedish authority announced its decision last October, he appeared at a hastily-called press conference in a blue company uniform looking totally stunned, and apologised profusely for not wearing a suit.
He says he owes US and German academics and researchers for promoting his mass spectrometer technology and giving it wider applications — and eventually recognition. He developed the technology in 1987 but it ended up as a commercial disaster for his company. The price was too high and Shimadzu managed to sell only one unit, which fortunately went to Beckman Research Institute in the US. Shimadzu discontinued production immediately, and Tanaka moved on to other areas of research.
Tanaka’s salary at Shimadzu was also modest. As soon as news of the Nobel Prize broke, the company offered to appoint him a board member, but he declined, insisting on remaining a research engineer. Consequently, Shimadzu made him head of a research institute, providing him with half a dozen researchers and additional resources for him to focus on life-science related research.
Tanaka has clear goals of making scientific discoveries that would bring a difference to ordinary people’s lives. These goals, he writes in his Nobel autobiography, were shaped when he discovered, just before starting university, that his biological mother died giving birth to him, and that he was an adopted son of his aunt and uncle. He had had a happy childhood blissfully ignorant of his parentage. This discovery, Tanaka writes, was the most traumatic experience in his life and made him re-assess his values.
Tanaka is open about his shortcomings and disastrous experiences. He insists that it was a “monumental error” in a research experiment that led to the discovery that eventually earned him the highest international recognition. He firmly believes in the adage that there is no success without failure, insisting that “I believe it’s possible to turn what’s conventionally seen as a weakness to a strength” and encouraging people to think creatively and outside the box.
Earlier in 2003, he delivered a speech in his hometown of Toyama, facing the Japan Sea, and identified Toyama’s rural environment as the source of creativity in his youth. Living close to nature, where nothing worked at the touch of a button, made him self-reliant and hardworking, and it also stimulated the development of a questioning mind, he said.
Celebrity status sits uneasily on Tanaka’s shoulders. I can no longer walk down the street unrecognised, he said in his speech in Toyama. My only request is that I be left alone to enjoy peace and quiet. That could be a long time coming for the new hero.

We hope someday another Koichi Tanaka made in MaxMet Research Institute.

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