Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, Gfp

I discovered the green fluorescent protein GFP from the jellyfish Aequorea aequorea in 1961 as a byproduct of the Ca-sensitive photoprotein aequorin (Shimomura et al., 1962; Johnson et al., 1962), and identified its chromophore in 1979 (Shimomura, 1979). GFP was a beautiful protein but it remained useless for the next 30 years after the discovery. My story begins in 1945, the year the city of Nagasaki was destroyed by an atomic bomb and World War II ended. At that time I was a 16-year old high school student, and I was working at a factory about 15 km northeast of Nagasaki. I watched the B-29 that carried the atomic bomb heading toward Nagasaki, then soon I was exposed to a blinding bright flash and a strong pressure wave that were caused by a gigantic explosion. I was lucky to survive the war. In the mess after the war, however, I could not find any school to attend. I idled for 2 years, and then I learned that the pharmacy school of Nagasaki Medical College, which had been completely destroyed by the atomic bomb, was going to open a temporary campus near my home. I applied to the pharmacy school and was accepted. Although I didn’t have any interest in pharmacy, it was the only way that I could have some education. After graduating from the pharmacy school, I worked as a teaching assistant at the same school, which was reorganized as a part of Nagasaki University. My boss Professor Shungo Yasunaga was a gentle and very kind person. In 1955, when I had worked for four years on the job, he arranged for me a paid leave of absence for one year, and he sent me to Nagoya University, to study at the laboratory of Professor Yoshimasa Hirata.