Google on Friday honoured Japanese educator and biochemist Michiyo Tsujimura with a doodle on her 133rd birth anniversary. Along with her extensive study on the properties and benefits of green tea, Tsujimura’s research made her the first woman in Japan to receive a doctoral degree in agriculture. 

A type of tea, green tea is made from Camellia sinensis leaves and buds that have not undergone the same withering and oxidation process used to make oolong teas and black teas. It is a popular beverage all around the world and comes with numerous health benefits. 

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Who was Michiyo Tsujimura?

Born on September 17, 1888,  in Okegawa, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, Michiyo Tsujimura was renowned for her research on green tea. 

She took her first steps to becoming a scientific researcher in 1920 as she joined the Hokkaido Imperial University as an unpaid laboratory assistant. At the time the university did not even accept female students. She began to analyze the nutritional properties of Japanese silkworms.

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Tsujimura then transferred to Tokyo Imperial University, where she started researching the biochemistry of green tea. Alongside Dr Umetaro Suzuki,  the scientist known for the discovery of vitamin B1, Tsujimura’s research revealed that green tea contained significant amounts of vitamin C. This was the first of many yet unknown molecular compounds in green tea that awaited under the microscope.

In 1929, she managed to isolate catechin—a bitter ingredient of tea. Catechin is a flavan-3-ol, a type of natural phenol and antioxidant. It is a plant secondary metabolite. She then  isolated tannin. In 1932, her findings on the constituents of green tea, titled “On the Chemical Components of Green Tea”, made her Japan’s first woman doctor of agriculture. 

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Apart from research, Tsujimura became the first Dean of the Faculty of Home Economics at Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School in 1950.  A stone memorial in honour of Dr. Tsujimura’s achievements can be found in her birthplace of Okegawa City.

She was in 1956 awarded the Japan Prize of Agricultural Science for her green tea research. Tsujimura was also conferred with the Order of the Precious Crown of the Fourth Class in 1968.

Michiyo Tsujimura died in 1969 at the age of 81.