10 Years Ago And Now: Eiichi Nakamura

Chemistry – An Asian Journal speaks with authors about 10 years ago and now.

The journal celebrates its 10th volume in 2015. The year’s first issue features papers from the journal’s most frequent authors.
The journal Editors have asked these featured authors to provide a glimpse of themselves and how their world has changed over the past decade.

Interview with Eiichi Nakamura

The biggest challenge facing society 10 years ago was … to produce as much material as possible with maximum potency at lowest cost.
And today … it is for chemists to ponder how to help human beings live in harmony with nature – an Asian philosophy, indeed.

10 years ago I was reading … the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
And today … Xenophon.

The best thing about my job 10 years ago was … a relatively limited range of chemistry that you could understand in full.
And today … it is an unlimited breadth of chemistry research, which is still expanding rapidly.

In a spare hour 10 years ago … I played the baroque flute.
And today … I still play the baroque flute.

My most exciting discovery in the past 10 years has been … the single-molecule and real-time TEM imaging of the motions and reactions of organic molecules.

Eiichi Nakamura
Date of birth	February 24, 1951
Position	Professor of Chemistry, University of Tokyo, Japan
Homepage	http://www.chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/users/common/NakamuraLabE.html
Video	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsVslEQgwSQ
Education	B.S. 1973, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (Professor Teruaki Mukaiyama) Ph.D. 1978, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (Professor Isao Kuwajima) Postdoc 1978-80, Columbia University, New York, USA (Professor Gilbert Stork)

Featured Article

High-Density Display of Protein Ligands on Self-Assembled Capsules via Noncovalent Fluorous Interactions,
Koji Harano, Junya Yamada, Shinichiro Mizuno, Eiichi Nakamura,
Chem. Asian J. 2014.
DOI: 10.1002/asia.201403144
It is widely recognized that molecular design often fails to produce molecular functions, because the function results not from a single molecule but from the cooperation of many molecules. In this work, we designed a molecular system where three molecular entities organize spontaneously in water to form a spherical vesicle covered by protein molecules. This work also highlights the potential of a low-landing voltage scanning electron microscope for imaging soft matter, including small proteins.