Japanese-born Marine biologist Osamu Shimomura passes away

Japanese-born Marine biologist Osamu Shimomura (90), who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has passed away in Nagasaki, Japan on 19th October 2018. Shimomura and two American scientists shared the 2008 Nobel prize for the discovery and development of a jellyfish protein (or Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP)) that later contributed to cancer studies. He was born in northern Kyoto in 1928 and studied in Nagasaki, where he survived the Aug. 9, 1945, U.S. atomic bombing at age 16. In 1960, he moved to Princeton University, where he isolated the protein in samples of thousands of jellyfish taken from the U.S. West Coast. The protein known as GFP lets off a glow when it is illuminated with ultraviolet light and has become a key tool in studying biological processes in cells.