2008 Nobel Prize Winner Shimomura Dies at 90

Nagasaki, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--Osamu Shimomura, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died in the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki Friday morning, Nagasaki University said Sunday. He was 90. Shimomura shared the prestigious prize with two other scientists for the discovery of green fluorescent protein, or GFP. He graduated in 1951 from Nagasaki Medical College Specialized School of Pharmaceutics, which was remade into Nagasaki University's School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. After staying at Nagoya University in central Japan and Princeton University in the United States, he became senior researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole in the U.S. state of Massachusetts in 1982. He retired in 2001 but continued his research in the United States. He worked on research into light-emitting creatures that he began during his days at Nagoya University. In summer 1961, he collected about 10,000 jellyfish at Friday Harbor in the state of Washington to extract luminescent substance. He discovered GFP during the work. END