Professor Michiyo Tsujimura

Professor Emeritus Michiyo Tsujimura, 辻村みちよ, was an agricultural scientist, biochemist and educator, and the first woman to earn a doctoral degree in agriculture in Japan. Alongside her colleague Seitaro Miura, she discovered that green tea contains vitamin C. Tsujimura’s research into the chemical components of green tea and its corresponding health benefits is credited with helping to popularise the drink internationally, particularly in the United States.

Tsujimura was born on 17 September 1888 in what is now Okegawa, a city northwest of Tokyo. She initially worked as a high school teacher, but dreamed of a career in science. At the time, female students were rarely accepted into Japanese universities, which meant Tsujimura had to be creative. In 1920, she began volunteering as a laboratory assistant in the agricultural chemistry department at Hokkaido Imperial University, researching the nutrition of silkworms. The role was unpaid, but it got Tsujimura where she wanted to be: in a lab.

She transferred to the medical chemical laboratory at Tokyo Imperial University in 1922, but her time here was cut short when an earthquake destroyed key academic buildings. And so Tsujimura moved to the scientific research institute RIKEN, where she was accepted as a research student working on nutritional chemistry.

It was at RIKEN that Tsujimura discovered Vitamin C in green tea in 1924, co-authoring an article with Miura about their findings in the journal Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry. Their research has been credited with dramatically boosting the market for green tea in the US. Tsujimura continued to study the chemical components of green tea throughout the 1920s and into the next decade, isolating and extracting the compounds catechin, tannin and gallocatechin, all of which are still recognised for their anticancer properties. In 1932, she was awarded her doctorate in agriculture from Tokyo Imperial University, the first woman to gain such a qualification in Japan.

Tsujimura held research positions at RIKEN before being appointed professor at Ochanomizu University in 1949. She also served as a lecturer at Jissen’s Women’s University and as the first dean of the faculty of home economics at Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School. Over the course of her career she published more than 20 academic papers and continued to teach until 1963.

In 1968, Japan’s emperor honoured Tsujimura with an Order of the Precious Crown in recognition of her contributions to science. She died the following year on 1 June 1969, aged 80.

Her green tea research won her the Japan Prize of Agricultural Science in 1956.

Further Reading

• Michiyo Tsujimura, Wikipedia
• Giants in History – Asia’s Women in Science, Asia Research News
• Michiyo Tsujimura’s 133rd birthday, Google Doodles, 17 September 2021

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

How to build a racing car, Fran Scott and Paul Boston

Build your own functional racing car from household objects in this step-by-step guide based on the science behind Formula One. Take your place at the starting gate and fire up your engine: it’s time to build your car! Join presenter and maker Fran Scott for a crash course in racing engineering, then use your newfound skills to build an awesome air-powered machine using household objects. 

Providing easy-to-follow instructions from the chassis to the engine, young readers will discover the science behind Formula One in this book. This project will walk budding engineers through the process of building a Formula One car and introducing the team that constructs them. The book then shows the reader how to build their own car by explaining each car part, suggesting household objects that could function as different car parts, in addition to troubleshooting, problem-solving, testing, tweaking, and racing!

The clear and colourful illustrations are peppered with fascinating facts and activities, offering encouragement that the process of making mistakes is what being an engineer is all about. With this brilliant and funny STEM book, young readers should have no problem creating their car one step at a time. So what are you waiting for? 3, 2, 1 … let’s race! 

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk here  

About the author

A neuroscientist by education, but an engineer and pyrotechnician at heart, Fran Scott uses her passion and knowledge to entertain and excite audiences with her high-impact demonstrations. She has worked in science communication for the past 17 years, explaining seemingly complex concepts in digestible steps (often using self-built props), and is widely recognised for her playful and fiery demonstrations on CBBC’s Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom. She has also presented shows for the BBC, Channel 4, and YouTube, and hosts award-winning podcasts on robotics, innovation, and infrastructure. Since her first appearance in 2012 she has presented over fifteen series and received numerous accolades, including BAFTA nominations, a Japan Prize nomination, and a Royal Television Society award.

Also appealing to an older audience, Fran has fronted The Department of Complaints and has participated as an engineering judge on Series 2 of Lego Masters and as an engineering expert on Engineering Catastrophes, How Hacks Work, and Abandoned Engineering. With her own stage production company (Great Scott! Productions) Fran also takes centre stage, producing high-octane shows. Her work as the Science Content Producer at the Royal Institution sees her heading up the demonstration team for their world-famous Christmas Lectures.

You can follow Fran Scott’s work here:

Twitter: @Frans_facts
Instagram: @frans_facts
Website: https://www.franscott.co.uk

About the illustrator

Paul Boston is an award-winning children’s illustrator who studied illustration and sequential design at Brighton University. Paul lists his inspirations as 1950’s children’s books, antique maps and diagrams, 17th Century engravings, gothic art and Japanese prints; to name just a few! Paul’s fun and playful style has a wide appeal and has been commissioned across the whole spectrum of publishing including activity books, educational titles, and picture books.

You can follow Paul Boston’s work here:

Website: kidscornerillustration.co.uk/artist/Paul_Boston_KC

With thanks to Synergy for their support.

Professor Helen Quinn

Prof Helen Rhoda Arnold Quinn is a particle physicist and educator. Now professor emerita of particle physics and astrophysics at Stanford University, she has made momentous contributions to theoretical physics. These include the Peccei-Quinn theory, a famous proposed solution to the strong charge-parity (CP) problem. After retiring from academia, Quinn has dedicated her career to strengthening science education in schools.

Born on 19 May 1943, Quinn grew up in Melbourne. She started an undergraduate degree in meteorology at Melbourne University when she was just 16, transferring to Stanford a year later when her father took a job in California. At Stanford she changed her major to physics, gaining her PhD in theoretical physics in 1967.

Quinn relocated to Hamburg for postdoctoral work at the DESY (the German Synchrotron Laboratory) before spending seven years at Harvard University, where she became involved in particle theory. Alongside Howard Georgi and Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg, Quinn demonstrated that three apparently different types of particle interactions (strong, electromagnetic, and weak) become very similar in extremely high-energy processes. This suggests they may actually be three aspects of a single unified force.

When Quinn returned to Stanford, she became professor of physics in the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory (now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). In 1977, she formulated the Peccei-Quinn theory with her colleague Roberto Peccei. They were trying to solve a longstanding mystery of particle physics: why does CP-symmetry (the symmetry between matter and antimatter) break in weak interactions, which drive nuclear decay, but not in strong interactions, which hold matter together?

Peccei and Quinn’s solution suggested that the universe may be near-symmetrical. Their model has since been superseded, but it remains one of the best-known and most influential proposed solutions to the CP problem. The Peccei-Quinn theory also predicted the existence of a new particle, the axion, which is used in some theories of supersymmetry and cosmic inflation. Some physicists believe the axion could explain dark matter.

Despite her trailblazing research, Quinn had always been interested in education; as an undergraduate, she assumed she would end up a physics teacher. In 1987, she co-founded and served as president of the Contemporary Physics Education Project (CPEP), a group of teachers, educators and physicists that aims to enhance how the subject is taught. Quinn helped design CPEP’s first product, a chart for particle physics teaching similar to the periodic table, which became a common sight in classrooms across the U.S. and worldwide.

In 2003, Quinn was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which enabled her to join its Board on Science Education (BOSE). She was appointed BOSE’s chair not long before retiring from active physics research in 2010, and held the role until 2014.

As BOSE chair, Quinn spearheaded the production of the “Framework for K-12 Science Education”, which formed the basis of the Next Generation Science Standards. These standards set out what students should understand about science throughout their time at school. Since 2013, they have since been adopted by dozens of US states and proved influential around the world. Quinn has said her ultimate goal is to facilitate education that creates “citizens who can look at a problem in their community and think like a scientist… I want high school and college graduates with capabilities that employers want, whether they come from well-educated families or not.”

Quinn’s work as a particle physicist has been honoured by the International Center for Theoretical Physics’ Dirac Medal in 2000; the American Institute of Physics’ Compton Medal in 2016; and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in 2018, among others.

Further Reading

• Helen Quinn, Wikipedia
• Helen Quinn, Stanford Profiles 
• Helen Quinn, David Zierler, American Institute of Physics, 14 August 2020
• Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn, Driving Around Stanford in a Clunky Jeep, Thomas Lin, Quanta, 15 June 2017
• A Wormhole Between Physics and Education, Thomas Lin, Quanta, 18 October 2016

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

Professor Susan Krumdiek

Professor Susan Pran Krumdieck is a mechanical and energy systems engineer, academic and international expert in energy transition research. Renowned for her forward-thinking work on sustainability, she is the co-founder of the transition engineering movement. This new discipline sees engineers developing innovative methods and technologies to help the world adapt to rapidly reduced fossil fuel production and consumption.

Krumdieck grew up in Colorado and initially dreamed of becoming an archeologist. The seeds for her later career were sown in the 1970s, when an energy crisis hit the U.S. and she noticed how people in rural areas seemed to adapt to scarcity relatively easily. She pursued engineering as a way of following her interest in energy systems, obtaining her PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In 2000, Krumdieck began lecturing in mechanical engineering at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. She rose to full professor in 2014, the first woman to hold the position, and served as director of the university’s influential Advanced Energy and Material Systems Lab (AEMSLab). Here, her team worked on energy transition, including creating new materials to address specific energy problems.

Krumdieck spent 20 years at the University of Canterbury, becoming an expert in developing new ideas for dealing with oil supply issues. More broadly, her research has advanced renewable and alternative energy technology. The term “transition engineering” was first used in 2010 to describe the approach to sustainable energy Krumdieck and her team were pioneering in New Zealand, which was concerned with how engineering could enable a rapid downshift in fossil fuel use.

Krumdieck’s work in this emerging field has included spearheading the launch of the Global Association for Transition Engineering (GATE), a charitable organisation made up of engineering professionals and academics. In 2015, she ran a course on transition engineering at the Grenoble Institute of Technology in France, which led to the opening of the world’s first transition school. Four years later, she published Transition Engineering: Building a Sustainable Future. This book provides a seven-step methodology that governments, industries and communities can adapt to respond to issues such as climate change, decline in conventional oil supply and local environmental constraints.

The ultimate aim of transition engineering is to help rapidly deliver the COP21 Paris Agreement requirement of an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas production. It seeks to do this through projects in industry and the public sector – spanning transportation, housing, commercial buildings, consumer products, air travel, agriculture and energy use. But transition engineers have other goals, too – including, in Krumdieck’s words, “realising social benefits and making profits”.

In 2020, Krumdieck left New Zealand to become a professor and Chair of Energy Transition Engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, a role in which she is developing an energy transition project on the Orkney Islands. Over the course of her career, Krumdieck has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers, supervised 21 PhD student completions, and been awarded over $7M in research grants as principal investigator.

She was appointed an honorary Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to sustainability research and engineering in 2021, and is a Member of the Royal Society of New Zealand. She has said her dream project is to apply the transition engineering methodology to a major oil company, adding: “Ingenuity, resourcefulness and creativity are the best resources for achieving change.”

You can follow her work here:

Twitter: @DrSKrumdieck

Further Reading

• Susan Krumdieck, Wikipedia
• Professor Susan Krumdieck, Transition Engineering 
• Heriot-Watt University Launches Energy Transition Focused Program, Paul Anderson, Rigzone, 10 August 2023
• Dr. Susan Krumdieck: Dedicating Her Energy to Engineering Solutions to Fuel Our Future, People Behind The Science Podcast, 29 August 2022
• ‘Sustainability is wishful thinking’: get ready for the energy downshift, John McCrone, Stuff, 14 November 2020
• Five Minutes with Professor Susan Krumdieck, Kavita Kansara, Engineering New Zealand, 29 September 2020
• Introducing “Transition Engineering”: A Bold New Approach To The Climate Crisis, Energy, Environment and Sustainability Group, Professional Engineering magazine, 27 April 2020
• Climate Change: How To Stop The Titanic, Susan Krumdieck, The Possible, November 2016

Written by Moya Crockett, with thanks to Stylist for their support.

The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent, Danielle J. Whittaker

Evolutionary science has defined the history of biology, providing the foundation for modern biology and opening the doors to novel types of research. It has played a crucial role in our understanding of how birds have evolved throughout history, debunking myths and helping scientific research progress beyond theory – enhancing our understanding of birds’ origins, adaptations, and behaviours. 

Avian scent has been a long-standing subject of misunderstanding in the scientific world; the myth of birds not having a sense of smell has caused great confusion in our understanding of how birds live and of their world as we know it. Many scientists had questions: 

• How do birds communicate?
• How is their behaviour influenced?
• How do they pick a mate?
• How do they choose where to build their nests?

The puzzling lack of evidence for the peculiar but widespread belief that birds have no sense of smell irked evolutionary biologist Danielle Whittaker. Exploring the science behind the myth led her on an unexpected quest investigating mysteries from how juncos win a fight to why cowbirds smell like cookies. 

The Secret Perfume of Birds is the untold story of a stunning discovery: not only can birds smell, but their scents may be the secret to understanding their world. It explores the twisting roads of scientific research, detailing the many trials and tribulations that can occur along the way. Drawing on her extensive expertise in ornithology and scent science, Whittaker delves into the evolution, biology, and behaviour of birds, showcasing how scent plays a crucial role in their lives, from communication and navigation to foraging and mate selection. Through engaging narratives and vivid anecdotes, she introduces readers to a diverse array of bird species, from the enchanting albatrosses of remote islands to the charismatic hummingbirds of lush tropical forests.

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk. 

About the Author

Danielle J Whittaker is an evolutionary biologist and the managing director of the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX) at Oregon State University. From gibbons in Indonesia to the dark-eyed juncos of North America, her research focuses on the forces that influence animal behaviour, mate selection, and evolution. Whittaker was previously managing director of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action at Michigan State University. 

She is intrigued by the unseen external forces that influence our behaviour, mate choice, and, ultimately, evolutionary trajectories. Her research focuses on the interaction between the microbiome and animal behaviour, and the resulting impact on evolutionary dynamics. She has specifically studied chemical communication in a songbird called the dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis), plus the uropygial-gland microbiome’s role in the production and evolution of chemical signals present in preen oil, as well as the effects of social behaviour on these symbiotic microbes.

You can follow Danielle Whittaker’s work here:

Twitter: @juncostink
Website: Danielle J Whittaker Bird Research (burroughs-whittaker.com) 

With thanks to Synergy for their support.