Thread by @hildabast

#tbt This is the graduating class of 1915, chemistry division, Tohoku Imperial University. There, at the end of the 2nd row, is the first woman to achieve a bachelor of science in Japan. Her name was 黒田チカ, Chika Kuroda (1884-1968) & she was the daughter of a samurai...1/5

...Kuroda was an organic chemist & studied natural pigments. As an undergraduate, she studied a purple one, Lithospermum erythrorhizon. When she presented her work on it to the Chemical Society of Japan, she was the first woman to ever do that, too ...2/5
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chika_Kur…

..Kuroda studied at Oxford Uni 1921-23, & later joined the RIKEN in Japan, where she determined the molecular structure of shikonin, that purple pigment & then of carthamin. It gives safflower its color: she earned her doctorate with that in 1929..3/5 riken.jp/en/about/histo…

...She studied several other pigments & was awarded the Majima Prize in 1936 by the Chemical Society of Japan. Here she is in 1948. Soon after, she began studying onion skin, extracting crystals that were used to create an antihypertensive drug...4/5

...There's a life-size monument to Kuroda in Saga, the city near where she was born. She died of heart disease aged 84. There's a Chika Kuroda prize at her alma mater for outstanding student achievement. 5/5
saga-travelsupport.com/en/spot/detail…
sentineljapan.com/2017/09/26/the…
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…