News
Condolence Message for Professor Koji Nakanishi, University Professor of Nagoya University
With great sadness, we pass along the news that Professor Koji Nakanishi passed away on Thursday, March 28th, 2019, and would like to express my deepest sympathy on the passing of him.
Professor Nakanishi had supported us in many ways and had been a great mentor to all of us as a senior of the Department of Chemistry at Nagoya University. In addition, his involvement as a pioneer in the interdisciplinary research between Chemistry and Biology had indeed contributed greatly to the establishment and growth of our institute.
Professor Nakanishi had been tackling challenges of determining the structure of complex natural products through introduction of physical phenomena (circular dichroism, nuclear overhauser effect) and succeeded in determining the structure of more than 200 complex natural products including Ginkgolides obtained from Ginkgo biloba, and elucidating biological activities of many natural products isolated by him. Professor Nakanishi was one of the pioneers in interdisciplinary research fields between Chemistry, and Physics and Biology, and had a great influence on the interdisciplinary research developed by ITbM.
Professor Nakanishi had greatly contributed to organize the Hirata Memorial Lecture (From 2014, the Hirata Award) as the Chair of the Hirata Memorial Foundation. He also visited Nagoya several times to give lectures as the gold medalist of 11th Nagoya Medal of Organic Chemistry in 2005 and one of the lecturers of the Nagoya University Lecture in 2010. They seem like only yesterday.
Professor Nakanishi's achievements had brought great innovations and advances in natural product chemistry research. We would like to follow his footsteps in developing our research that can transform the world.
Again, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincerest appreciation for Professor Nakanishi's kindness and offer my deepest sympathy.
April 1st, 2019
Kenichiro Itami, Director
Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM), Nagoya University
2019-04-01