Born inFukuchiyama, Kyoto in 1928, Shimomura was brought up inManchukuo (Manchuria, China) andOsaka, Japan while his father served as an officer in theImperial Japanese Army. Later, his family moved toIsahaya, Nagasaki,[3] 25 km from the epicenter of the August 1945atomic bombing of the city. He recalled hearing, as a 16-year-old boy, the bomber planeBockscar before the atom bomb exploded.[4] The explosion flash blinded Shimomura for about thirty seconds, and he was later drenched by the "black rain" bomb fallout.[5] He overcame great odds in the following 11 years to earn an education and achieve academic success.[3]
Shimomura's education opportunities were starkly limited in devastated, post-war Japan. Although he later recalled having no interest in the subject,[4] he enrolled in the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Nagasaki Medical College (nowNagasaki University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences).[6] The Medical College campus had been entirely destroyed by the atomic bomb blast, forcing the pharmacy school to relocate to a temporary campus near Shimomura's home. This proximity was the fortuitous reason he embarked upon the studies and career which would ultimately lead to unanticipated rewards.[4] Shimomura was awarded aBS degree in pharmacy in 1951, and he stayed on as a lab assistant through 1955.[4]
Shimomura's mentor at Nagasaki helped him find employment as an assistant to ProfessorYoshimasa Hirata atNagoya University in 1956.[6] While working for Professor Hirata, he received aMS degree in organic chemistry in 1958 and, before leaving Japan for an appointment at Princeton University, aPh.D. in organic chemistry in 1960 at Nagoya University.[7][8] At Nagoya, Hirata assigned Shimomura the challenging task of determining what made the crushed remains of a type ofcrustacean (Jp.umi-hotaru, lit. "sea-firefly",Vargula hilgendorfii) glow when moistened with water. This assignment led Shimomura to the successful identification of the protein causing the phenomenon, and he published the preliminary findings in theBulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan in a paper titled "Crystalline Cypridina luciferin." The article caught the attention of Professor Frank Johnson atPrinceton University, and Johnson successfully recruited Shimomura to work with him in 1960.
His wife, Akemi, whom Shimomura met atNagasaki University, is also an organic chemist and was a partner in his research activities. Their son,Tsutomu Shimomura, is a computer security expert who was involved in the arrest ofKevin Mitnick. Their daughter, Sachi Shimomura, is director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department atVirginia Commonwealth University and the author ofOdd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Literature.
