Japanese scientist Koichi Tanaka was born in 1959 in Toyama City, the capital of Toyama Prefecture, Japan. He received a bachelor's degree from Tohoku University in 1983. He currently works at Shimadzu Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Kyoto, where he is a R&D engineer and conducts analytical measurement business for the company. Director of the Ministry of Life Sciences Business Center and Life Sciences Research Institute. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 and was the 12th Japanese to win the Nobel Prize. Compared with previous Nobel laureates, Tanaka's experience is very ordinary and therefore appears to be unusual. He is neither a professor nor a doctor, nor does he even have a master's degree.
Tanaka graduated from the Faculty of Engineering of Tohoku University with a major in electrical engineering and had absolutely no connection with chemistry, biochemistry and other fields. Tohoku University is a very excellent university besides the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University. It once ranked third. Tanaka's mother died of illness one month after giving birth to him, and he was adopted by his uncle and aunt since he was a child. He was shocked when he was told this fact in college. From then on, he determined to research medical testing instruments.
After joining the company, he devoted himself to the research work in the laboratory with great enthusiasm, ignoring all his life-long events and reputation promotion. Judging from the few words revealed in the newspaper, Tanaka only married a daughter-in-law through a blind date a few years ago. On the other hand, his title is just director. But this is completely different from the title of director in China. Positions in Japanese companies are divided into two series: managerial positions, specialized positions or general positions. People with a university degree generally fall into the management occupation series. When you join the company, you first work as a clerk for 1-2 years, and then you are promoted to director. In the future, there will also be department heads, deputy section chiefs, section chiefs, deputy chiefs, ministers, etc. Each position is often divided into 2-3 levels, and there are also minimum tenure requirements. According to reports, Tanaka himself refused all promotion exams in order to be able to engage in research work on the front line of the laboratory. Like Chinese companies, wages in Japanese companies are also linked to job titles. The annual salary adjustment amount is very small, roughly 2-3% of the monthly salary. It is conceivable that he will not have much financial spare time. Therefore, it can be said that Tanaka is almost at the bottom of Japanese corporate society. That's probably why he's known as a weirdo within the company.
His contribution to chemistry is similar to John Finn, so he also received 1/4 of the bonus. Personal Achievement Tanaka designed an analytical instrument based on his own ideas and applied for a patent along with the analytical method. and was approved. These products have created profits equivalent to more than 100 million yuan for the company. Tanaka's method that won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and his related patented inventions only received 11,000 yen from the company at the time. The award is 5,000 yen when the patent application is accepted and 6,000 yen when the patent application is approved. 11,000 yen was equivalent to about 700 yuan in 2002.
Tanaka has published almost no papers. The only few articles were published in conferences and magazines that were not very important. He had almost no interaction with Japanese academia. So much so that when the news of the award came the night before yesterday, the Japanese academic community was caught off guard. When the TV station interviewed the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Professor Noyori Ryoharu of Nagoya University, the professor revealed that he had just contacted the 2000 winner, Professor Shirakawa Hideki, and did not know who Koichi Tanaka was. In the end, the professor could only stammer: This shows that as long as you work hard, you can win the Nobel Prize without being active in academia. Another professor who had a personal acquaintance with Tanaka could not find words to praise him. He just said generally: He is very honest and enthusiastic about his work. When I asked how they met again, it turned out that the professor had just bought an analytical instrument from Shimadzu Manufacturing Co., Ltd. and had heard a product introduction by Tanaka Tsukuru.
The Japanese Ministry of Education always believes that Nobel Prize winners will be within the academic circles they control. Every year they come up with a long list of scientists who might be nominated. However, a winner like Koichi Tanaka, who is an outsider in the academic world, can be said to be a big surprise among surprises. Professor Masatoshi Oshiba's award was predicted a few years ago. Therefore, although the Japanese academic community expressed joy at Oshiba's award, they were not surprised. Tanaka Koichi's award was like a bolt from the blue. It is said that on the day when the news of Tanaka’s award was learned, Japan’s Ministry of Education was in chaos.
Because in their list of information on Japanese life science academic circles, Tanaka Koichi’s name cannot be found at all. In the end, they only obtained Tanaka Koichi’s resume through Internet messages.
In these days of sluggish economic conditions and bleak prospects, the winning of both the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry brought a brief burst of joy to Japanese society. However, Tanaka's boss and colleagues have new confusion: Should they call him Mr. (Tanaka) in the future? (Note: In Japan, the Chinese phrase "Mr." is only used for people who engage in specific respectable professions, such as teachers and doctors. Later, it was also used for politicians who were elected as members of Congress) Japan has a special distinction in its evaluation of academics. Extremely feudal consciousness and artificial standards. There are two great differences between Koichi Tanaka and the authoritative scientists in Japanese society. First, he is not an ivory tower scholar. Second, he is young, only in his early 40s, and is not as good as most authoritative Japanese scientists, who are all elderly and senior. After winning the Nobel Prize, Tanaka Koichi jumped from an unknown small professional researcher to a popular figure in Japan overnight. The boss of Shimadzu Manufacturing Co., Ltd., the company he worked for, rushed back from his business trip to give him millions of yen in bonuses and announced that he would be promoted from the director position to the director level.
Having never been able to receive domestic awards, he was awarded several Resident Citizen Honor Awards in less than a month after winning the award. The Japanese government also hurriedly added his name to the Japanese Cultural Medal, Japan's highest honor, awarded after the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize dominated everything about Koichi Tanaka in Japan. A few days ago, when he was holding an honorary doctorate from Northeastern University, the university where he was born, his humorous words amazed thousands of scholars in the audience. He said: "The reason why I decided not to take the graduate school exam was because I hated the school asking me to take the German exam... Now, you can get this doctorate without taking the foreign language exam... However, I think the title of doctorate is only when I book a seat on the plane." Only then can I use it. Because this title can upgrade me to business class for free..." When he mentioned the results of his research, he only had one key word in his answer, which was "interest." He said, "I have loved research since I was a child. After I took office, I refused to be promoted to management many times because I wanted to stay in the research department and conduct research. In the future, I will continue to research. I am interested and like to engage in research." Perhaps, He is reminding an issue that has been forgotten by people in the Japanese ivory tower - "the source of learning is interest"