Jokichi Takamine

Jokichi Takamine was born on 3 November 1854 in Takaoka, Japan, and died on 22 July 1922 in New York City. He graduated from the Imperial University of Tokyo's college of science and engineering in 1879 and did graduate study at the University of Glasgow and Anderson College in Scotland, then joined Japan's Department of Agriculture and Commerce before founding his own fertiliser company in 1887, where he isolated a starch-digesting enzyme he named Takadiastase. Invited to the United States in 1890 to adapt the enzyme for industrial distilling, he established a research laboratory in Clifton, New Jersey, where in 1901 he became the first person to isolate a hormone in pure form, adrenaline, from animal adrenal glands, patented and sold as Adrenalin. In 1913 he delivered a speech to more than a hundred Japanese business and scientific leaders arguing that Japan needed a dedicated national research institute if it hoped to compete in science-driven industry, the proposal credited as the direct origin of RIKEN, founded four years later with the businessman Eiichi Shibusawa organising the funding and Takamine himself among its founders.