Kōichi Tanaka
Kōichi Tanaka ( Japanese 田中 耕 一 , Tanaka Kōichi ; born August 3, 1959 in Toyama , Toyama Prefecture ) is a Japanese electrical engineer . He improved the technology for mass spectrometers and made it possible to apply them to large molecules such as proteins.
Live and act
Kōichi Tanaka studied at the engineering faculty of Tōhoku University and, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, joined Shimadzu in 1983 , which manufactured mass spectrometers.
In the mid-1980s he had a breakthrough in mass spectrometry. In order to use lasers to make molecules and their fragments accessible to mass spectrometry, they are embedded in a matrix with molecules in the Soft Laser Desorption (SLD) method according to Tanaka, which transfer the laser effect to other molecules. Koichi used a matrix with fine cobalt particles in glycerine . This enabled him to make molecules (such as proteins) with a previously unimaginable molecular mass accessible to the mass spectrometer. If laser light were to act directly on these, they would be broken or otherwise disturbed. He filed his patent application in 1985 and made the technology public at a conference in 1987.
Together with John B. Fenn and Kurt Wüthrich , he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 . There was criticism of Tanaka's selection for the Nobel Prize, as a similar technique was developed by the German scientists Franz Hillenkamp and Michael Karas in 1985: MALDI , which is now widely used, especially in connection with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF) . It uses small organic molecules like the amino acid tryptophan in the matrix. Tanaka was the first to apply the technique to proteins.
In the same year Tanaka was honored as a person with special cultural merits and was also awarded the Japanese Order of Culture . He received an honorary doctorate from Tohoku University and in 1989 he received the Japanese Society for Mass Spectrometry Award and in 2003 a special award from the same society. In 2006 he became a member of the Japan Academy.
In 2009 he became visiting professor at the medical faculty of the University of Tokyo .
Individual evidence
literature
- K. Tanaka: Solvent-free Organic Synthesis , Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2003, ISBN 3-527-30612-9
Web links
- Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 2002 award ceremony for Koichi Tanaka
- Shimadzu Corporation: A noble soul (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Tanaka, Kōichi |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | 田中耕一 (Japanese) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Japanese electrical engineer, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2002 |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 3rd August 1959 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Toyama |