Nagoya University, Japan
Ryoji Noyori was bom on September 3, 1938 in a surburb of Kobe (now Ashiya), Japan. Upon completion of Master's degree in 1963, he was immediately appointed Instructor of Professor Hitosi Noyaki's laboratories at Kyoto University and received DEng. degree in 1967.
In 1967, he received a totally unexpected offer from Nagoya University. He was asked to chair a newly created organic chemistry laboratory. He was first appointed Associate Professor of Chemistry.
In February, 1968 he was asked to create a new stream of organic chemistry at Nagoya, thereby making the Chemistry
Prof.Noyori is in preparation for his talk at 10th Asian Chemical Congress in Hanoi, Oct.21-24, 2003 Vietnam
Department more visible. He decided to focus on organic synthesis using organometallic chemistry, which then comprised a branch of inorganic chemistry.
In 1969, he went to Harvard. His research theme was synthesis of prostaglandins (PGs). After returning to Nagoya in 1970, he began to study organic synthesis and homogeneous catalysis via organometallic chemistry. In August 1972, he was promote to Full Professor. In 1980 after a six-year endeavour, the first work on asymmetric synthesis of amino acids via this BINAP chemistry was published.
BINAP chemistry has been applied to the large scale production of the synthetic intermediates of antibiotic carbapenems (Takasago International Co.) and levofloxacin, a quinolone antibacterial agent (Takasago Co./Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co.). The efficiency of BINAP chemistry rivals or in certain cases even exceeds that of enzyme. In addition, a team of Noyori Molecular Catalysis Project (ERATO, 1991-1996) discovered the catalysts of type RuCl> leading to another major breakthrough in hydrogenation.
Nobel Prize ceremony in Sweden (taken from his slide show)
His activities are not limited to education and research. He has served on the editorial boards of some thirty international journals including the editorship of Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis (Wiley/VCH) which emphasizes the "practical elegance" of chemical synthesis. Furthermore, he has been involved in much administrtive work as Science Advisor (1992-1996) and Member of the Science Council (1996-present) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and technology; Dean of Graduate School of Science at Nagoya University (1997-1999); and President of the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan (1997-1999).
Beside many awards and medals he has been received from Japanese Foundations, Societies and Government, he has received many awards, medals and honours from International Foundations and Societies. Especially he has received Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2001 with William S. Knowles and K.Barry Sharpless.