Hideyo Noguchi, Hardworking, Humble, Hometown Hero

The commonest paper currency in Japan has the face of a scientist of humble beginnings, yet Hideyo Noguchi is one of Japan's all-time heroes. Being the first scientist to have his face on Japanese money is just a small token of appreciation.

He was born Seisaku Noguchi on November 9, 1876 in a small village in the center of Fukushima Prefecture (the one hit by Japan's 311 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant leak, March 11, 2011). His father was a poor farmer, and his mother was virtually illiterate. Before the age of two, Noguchi fell onto a fireplace and badly burned his left hand causing it to be deformed with fused fingers. His teacher and classmates pitched in to send him to a hospital at ate 8 for hand surgery, which impressed Noguchi about medicine. Later, at 16 he had another operation which improved his hand even more. Finally, at 21 he had a third operation. (Most pictures I have found of him show him hiding that hand even after reconstructive surgery.) An elementary school test examiner recognized Noguchi's hardworking studious nature and good graded even though his family couldn't buy new textbooks, so he looked after Noguchi and his family for several years. 

After graduating from high school with honors, he joined Kaiyo Hospital as a medical student and studied medical science, English, and French for 3 years. He read foreign medical books by using a dictionary. In 1896, Noguchi traveled to Tokyo to take the National Medical Practitioners Qualifying Examination to become a doctor. This took him a full year, taking each half a year apart. During that time, he worked as a janitor to pay the bills. Before he struck out from his home in northern Japan, though, he showed his devotion to passing the exam by carving a statement on a post outside his home: "I shall not return to my native home if I do not achieve my objective." Most applicants for the doctor's exam need several years to pass, but Noguchi's studies paid off and he succeeded in less time.

Seisaku Noguchi, 1896 (from Japan Cabinet Office)

Noguchi struggled to find clinical work that first year because of his deformed left hand, but he persisted. He then read a novel Portraits of Contemporary Students, whose main character, "Seisaku Nonoguchi," was a failed immoral medical student (a drinker and woman chaser). Seisaku Noguchi thought deeply about this and his difficulty in finding work, so he asked his old teacher for advice. As a result, he went home and changed his name from Seisaku to Hideyo, which means "superior man of the world" just to show his determination to help the citizens of Japan as a medical researcher. After that, he found work at three locations. For a month he lectured at the Takayama Dental School, then Juntendo Hospital and Kitasato Institute of Infectious Diseases (both in Tokyo), and finally the Yokohama Port Quarantine Station.

At the Kitasato Institute, he met a medical researcher Simon Flexner from the University of Pennsylvania who was traveling abroad. Noguchi helped as a translator/interpreter and began to dream of working internationally. As a quarantine officer in Yokohama, he was commended for his discovery of a person who had the plague, a very dangerous disease to the public. After six months, he was sent to China to work for 2 months for the International Sanitary Board as a health officer. His excellent English and rapid learning of Chinese earned him great praise, and this began his international experience. 

quarantine officer, 1899 (photo from Japan Cabinet Office)

An eager and excited Hideyo Noguchi then embarked on a sudden trip to the University of Pennsylvania where he hoped to engage in research. He began work in the Department of Pathology as Flexner's lab assistant studying snake venoms. 

Noguchi and Flexner at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (photos from Japan Cabinet Office)

Three years later, he got a fellowship grant to study bacteria in Copenhagen under Thorvald Madsen. Specifically, he learned about blood serum changes when people are infected, and how to use it to treat other patients. This was enough after just one year to earn him a job back in the U.S. with Flexner again, in a new research facility, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Small town Hideyo Noguchi's career as a researcher in bacterial infections was now officially off to a start in 1904 at age 27! He even got a master's degree there in 1908. Three years later he got married to an American Mary Dardis.

In Pennsylvania, with his background in blood serum detection of infectious agents, Noguchi succeeded in growing the curly bacterium called Treponema pallidum from the brain of a patient with syphilis. People had known it caused syphilis only since 1905, but its diagnosis was difficult. He published a book on the topic of identifying this bacterium, made international lectures, and was even nominated for the Nobel (but never got it). However, he did win the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy in 1915. In addition, the King of Spain and the King of Denmark awarded him with medals for his lectures and research.

Manual on detecting syphilis

Noguchi worked on many other diseases, too, although he made some mistakes in identifying the causes. Nevertheless, he was one of very few Japanese researchers who lived and worked outside of Japan. His research took him to Central and South America to study yellow fever, Oroya fever, poliomyelitis and trachoma.

Landing in Ecuador (photo from the Japan Cabinet Office)

In 1914, he got his PhD from Tokyo Imperial University despite all of the research and traveling he was doing.

Unsurprisingly, his home life with Mary was sporadic, and he kept the marriage secret from most people. He took work home, literally, and kept bacterial cultures in their refrigerator and worked on the kitchen table. Mary loved him, though, and broke him of his habit to wear old, oversized clothes. She even read novels to him while he worked at home. His eagerness to constantly do research despite getting only 3-4 hours of sleep per night also showed some sloppiness in his work. An enlarged heart and diabetes were two illnesses he suffered from, and in 1917 a typhoid infection almost killed him.

While studying the cause of yellow fever, he thought it was the same kind of spiral bacteria that caused syphilis. That was proven false, though, and it might have been one reason he accepted the opportunity to travel to Ghana, Africa to study yellow fever. His colleague Dr. Adrian Stokes died of it before Noguchi left the U.S. in 1927, so the Rockefeller Institute asked him to go. Within 6 months, he had confirmed yellow fever was caused by a virus, but he caught the disease twice himself, and shortly before he was to return to America, he died from it in 1928.

Noguchi in his lab (photo from Japanese government)

Subsequently, his home in Fukushima has been made into an elaborate museum dedicated to his life and exploits. It even has an animatronic figure of him speaking. In his life, he published 200 papers, and his colleagues marveled at his energy and lack of sleep, calling him the "human dynamo". Hideyo (superior man of the world) Noguchi is revered by many in Japan even to this day.

Museum home and animatronic display (photos from Nippon.com)