Osamu Hayaishi

Osamu Hayaishi (Japanese早 石 修, born January 8, 1920 in Stockton, California, United States) is a Japanese biochemist.

Life

Hayaishi studied medicine at Osaka University, where he earned his MD in 1942. After that, he conducted research there in the Department of Bacteriology. 1949/50, he was at the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin -Madison, 1950 at the University of California, Berkeley, 1951/52, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and 1952-1954 Assistant Professor in the Medical School of the University of Washington in St. Louis. 1954 to 1958 he headed the Department of Toxicology of the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. 1958 to 1983 he was professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Kyoto. Between 1961-1963 he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the Medical School of Osaka University, and from 1970 to 1974 Professor and Head of the Department of Physiological Chemistry and Nutrition at the University of Tokyo. In 1983 he became director of the Osaka Medical College, where he stayed until 1989. 1987 to 1998 he was director of the Osaka Bioscience Institute. Since 2004 he is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Institute.

Hayaishi is known for his pioneering role in the research of oxygenase enzymes and their role in metabolism. Later he devoted himself to sleep research and the role of prostaglandins in the initiation of sleep.

In 1964 he was awarded the Asahi Prize and 1972 Bunka Kōrōsha, the person with special cultural merits, appointed. In 1986 he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine. He is a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences. Hayaishi was awarded the Japan Academy and the Order of the Sacred Treasure at Great band. In 1999 he received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the World Federation of Sleep Research Societies ( WFSRS ).