It turned out that about 1,300 research memos written by Dr. Kenichi Fukui, who was the first Japanese to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, were donated to Kyoto University.
The contents of the memos range from chemistry to medicine, and the researchers who organized them say that it is a valuable material that shows the wide range of interests of Dr. Fukui.
Dr. Kenichi Fukui was the first Japanese to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry at the age of 63 in 1981 when he was a professor at the Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto University and clarified the mechanism of chemical reactions by making full use of the state-of-the-art quantum mechanics at that time. Did.
It has been more than 20 years since Dr. Fukui died, and it turned out that the materials at home were donated to Kyoto University last year.
The materials include more than 1,300 memos that Dr. Fukui seems to have written down when he was in his thirties and forties, and he writes down ideas that come to mind on the back of the calendar.
In it, next to a newspaper article about the drug "thalidomide" that caused phytotoxicity at that time, the chemical formula of the substance that slightly changed thalidomide was written with a red pen, and the researcher who was in charge of organizing it was phytotoxic. I think it is possible that we have considered a structure that does not cause phytotoxicity.
It also includes 11 memos that discuss genetic abnormalities that cause cancer development based on chemical energy as "problems to be considered immediately".
In yet another memo, in addition to examining the rate of division of cancer cells in detail, there is also a memo on the molecular structure of chemical substances contained in plants and substances used for insect repellent, which is of interest to Dr. Fukui. You can see that it covered a wide range of fields from chemistry to medicine.
Professor Emeritus Kazuyoshi Tanaka, who was instructed by Dr. Fukui and currently belongs to the Kenichi Fukui Memorial Research Center at Kyoto University, said, "Dr. Fukui is said to have put a notepad aside when he went to bed. It was "Memo Ma". It is a valuable material that shows that the wide range of interests was the basis for producing excellent results. "
This memo will be published as image data on the homepage of the digital archive of Kyoto University in the future.