{"id":6386,"date":"2009-11-20T13:56:49","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T18:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm-news\/?p=445"},"modified":"2009-11-20T13:56:49","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T18:56:49","slug":"osamu-shimomuras-serendipitous-nobel-returning-to-bu-a-chemist-recounts-a-remarkable-scientific-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2009\/11\/20\/osamu-shimomuras-serendipitous-nobel-returning-to-bu-a-chemist-recounts-a-remarkable-scientific-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Osamu Shimomura\u2019s Serendipitous Nobel:  Returning to BU, a chemist recounts a remarkable scientific journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Osamu Shimomura stood quietly in front of a Medical Campus audience yesterday, slender shoulders slouched forward, eyes gazing down.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_444\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-444\" style=\"width: 565px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-444\" src=\"\/camed\/files\/2009\/11\/shimomura.jpg\" alt=\"Osamu Shimomura, a School of Medicine professor emeritus of physiology and one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008, returned to MED to give his Nobel lecture, Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP: My Nobel Prize Lecture. Photos by Kalman Zabarsky\" width=\"555\" height=\"370\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-444\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Osamu Shimomura, a School of Medicine professor emeritus of physiology and one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008, returned to MED to give his Nobel lecture, Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP: My Nobel Prize Lecture. Photos by Kalman Zabarsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Beside him, David Atkinson, chairman of the School of Medicine physiology and biophysics department, displayed a gold medallion the size of his palm to the growing crowd: Shimomura\u2019s Nobel Prize in chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee that everybody?\u201d Atkinson asked. \u201cThat\u2019s the real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Shimomura, a MED professor emeritus of physiology and a former senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, was one of three winners of the prize in 2008 for his discovery of green fluorescent protein in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. He shared the $1.4 million award with Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, two researchers who pioneered cellular research techniques using the proteins Shimomura identified.<\/p>\n<p>Shimomura was back at BU to give his Nobel Prize presentation, Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP: My Nobel Prize Lecture, before dozens of BU faculty, staff, and students in the auditorium at 670 Albany Street.<\/p>\n<p>President Robert A. Brown introduced Shimomura. Without the researcher\u2019s discovery of \u201ctiny molecular flashlights,\u201d Brown said, many of the experiments performed in laboratories around the world, in fields ranging from biophysical chemistry to ecology and evolution, would not be possible.<\/p>\n<p>All this from a man who saw the horrors that scientific experimentation can bring. At 16, Brown recounted, Shimomura was 15 kilometers from the epicenter of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Read the whole story by Leslie Friday on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/today\/2009\/11\/17\/osamu-shimomura-s-serendipitous-nobel\" target=\"_blank\">BU Today<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Osamu Shimomura stood quietly in front of a Medical Campus audience yesterday, slender shoulders slouched forward, eyes gazing down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}