Google Doodle Honours Japanese Biochemist Michiyo Tsujimura

Google Doodle celebrates the works of Japanese Biochemist Michiyo Tsujimura

(Photo: Google)

Google Doodle on Friday, 17 September, celebrated the 133rd birthday of Japanese educator and biochemist Michiyo Tsujimura. She is known for her groundbreaking research on the nutritional benefits of Green Tea, and addresses an important question on "why green tea tastes so bitter when steeped for too long?"

Michiyo Tsujimura, was born on 17 September 1888 in Okegawa, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. She spent the initial part of her career teaching science and later went on to become a scientific researcher at Hokkaido Imperial University in 1920. There, she analyzed the nutritional properties of Japanese silkworms.

After a few years of research, she was transferred to Tokyo Imperial University, where she began researching the biochemistry of green tea alongside Dr Umetaro Suzuki, known for his discovery of vitamin B1.

There combined research work reveled that green tea contains a significant amount of vitamin C—the first of many yet unknown molecular compounds in green tea that awaited under the microscope. Later, she isolated catechin in 1929, a bitter ingredient of tea. "Then, the next year she isolated tannin, an even more bitter compound," reads the Google Doodle blog.

She graduated as the first woman doctor of agriculture in Japan in 1932, and her findings formed the foundation for her doctoral thesis, “On the Chemical Components of Green Tea”.