Hideyo Noguchi (野口 英世) was a Japanese physician and scientist born November 9, 1876. Noguchi is known for his contributions to syphilis research and also worked on yellow fever.
Noguchi began his medical career in Japan, but soon joined the Rockefeller Institute for Tropical Medicine in New York in 1914. At that time, his work concerned poisonous snake venoms. It was there that he began working on syphilis, a disease that was causing many deaths at the time. He developed a method to cultivate the bacteria responsible for the disease, which led to a better understanding of the disease and improved treatments.
While working at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in 1911, he was accused of vaccinating orphan children with syphilis during a clinical study. He was acquitted of any wrongdoing at the time but, since the late 20th century, his conduct of the study has become one of the earliest examples of unethical human experimentation.
Unfortunately, Noguchi’s career was cut short by his untimely death on May 21, 1928. He was struck down by the yellow fever virus while working on this virus in Accra. His work on yellow fever was widely criticized as taking an inaccurate approach that was at odds with contemporary research and confusing yellow fever with other pathogens. It turned out that he had confused yellow fever with leptospirosis. The vaccine he developed against “yellow fever” has been used successfully to treat the latter disease.
Although his career was short, Noguchi left a strong influence in the medical world. His work on syphilis helped to understand this disease and led to improved treatments. He is considered one of the greatest Japanese scientists of all time and is still celebrated for his contributions to medicine and science. Historians have found that Noguchi was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine several times: in 1913-1915, 1920, 1921 and 1924-1927. Since 2004, his portrait has been printed on Japanese 1,000 yen banknotes.
