Feted in a Doodle a little while ago, Michiyo Tsujimura was the first Japanese woman to earn a science doctorate, in 1932, at a time when women in Japan were not allowed to go to university. Starting out as an “unpaid” assistant in the food nutritional laboratory of the agricultural chemistry department, she subsequently succeeded in detecting vitamin C in green tea, isolating the flavonoid catechin (a powerful, natural antioxidant), gallocatechol, and extracting tannin in crystal form. Her nutritional chemistry discoveries concerning the components of green tea would earn her academic recognition and contribute to significantly increasing green tea exports to North America and the rest of the world.
