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Koji Nakanishi pioneered the use of spectroscopic and chemical methods to determine the structure of natural products, substances that often occur in only minute quantities. Using these methods, he determined the structure of over 180 natural products.
Nakanishi was born on May 11, 1925 in Hong Kong. Because his father worked for the Yokohama Species Bank, the family moved approximately every three years to different locations around the world. Nakanishi spent the first ten years of his life in Hong Kong; Lyon, France; London; and Alexandria, Egypt. The family returned to Osaka, Japan in 1935. Even though Nakanishi spoke Japanese fluently, he needed to learn to write Japanese before he could begin school. He was later accepted into Konan High School, a prestigious private school in Kobe where he received a strong science education. He earned both bachelor's and doctorate degrees from Nagoya University. During the postwar period, he met and married his wife, Yasuko. They have two children, Kay (Keiko) and Jun.
Nakanishi is the Centennial Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University and the Director of Suntory Institute of Bioorganic Research in Osaka, Japan. In 1996 the American Chemical Society and the Chemical Society of Japan paid tribute to his many outstanding contributions when they announced the creation of the Nakanishi Prize to recognize "significant work that extends chemical and spectroscopic methods to the study of important biological phenomena." That same year, Nakanishi received the Welch Prize in Chemistry in recognition for his many outstanding contributions to bioorganic chemistry.
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