is a Japanese

organic chemist Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, J. ...

and Professor of Chemistry at

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. He discovered the

Fukuyama coupling The Fukuyama coupling is a coupling reaction taking place between a thioester and an organozinc halide in the presence of a palladium catalyst. The reaction product is a ketone. This reaction was discovered by Tohru Fukuyama et al. in 1998. Adv ...

in 1998.

Biography

Fukuyama studied chemistry at

Nagoya University , abbreviated to or NU, is a Japanese national research university located in Chikusa-ku, Nagoya. It was the seventh Imperial University in Japan, one of the first five Designated National University and selected as a Top Type university of T ...

with degrees Bachelor's (1971) and Master's (1973) degrees. As a graduate student, he then worked at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, where he received his doctorate in 1977 as an academic student of

Yoshito Kishi is a Japanese chemist who is the Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He is known for his contributions to the sciences of organic synthesis and total synthesis. Kishi was born in Nagoya, Japan and attended Nagoya Univers ...

. Until 1978, he continued his research as a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry of Harvard University and then moved to

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

as an assistant professor, where in 1988 he obtained the rank of a chair holder. In 1995, he accepted a professorship in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the

, Japan. Since 2013, Fukuyama has been working as a professor at the Nagoya University - more precisely: Designated Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The 2015

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accord ...

winner

Satoshi Ōmura is a Japanese biochemist. He is known for the discovery and development of hundreds of pharmaceuticals originally occurring in microorganisms. In 2015, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell fo ...

is his old friend.

Achievements

Fukuyama reduction The Fukuyama reduction is an organic reaction and an organic reduction in which a thioester is reduced to an aldehyde by a silyl hydride in presence of a catalytic amount of palladium. This reaction was invented in 1990 by Tohru Fukuyama. In the or ...

* Fukuyama indole synthesis *

Selected publications

* ''Practical Total Synthesis of (±)-Mitomycin C'', T. Fukuyama and L.-H. Yang,

J. Am. Chem. Soc. The ''Journal of the American Chemical Society'' is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1879 by the American Chemical Society. The journal has absorbed two other publications in its history, the ''Journal of Analytic ...

, 111, 8303–8304 (1989). * ''Facile Reduction of Ethyl Thiol Esters to Aldehydes: Application to a Total Synthesis of (+)-Neothramycin A Methyl Ether'', T. Fukuyama, S.-C. Lin, and L.-P. Li, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 112, 7050–7051 (1990). * ''Total Synthesis of (+)-Leinamycin'', Y. Kanda and T. Fukuyama, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 115, 8451–8452 (1993). * ''2- and 4-Nitrobenzenesulfonamides: Exceptionally Versatile Means for Preparation of Secondary Amines and Protection of Amines'', T. Fukuyama, C.-K. Jow, and M. Cheung, Tetrahedron Lett., 36, 6373–6374 (1995). * “Radical Cyclization of 2-Alkenylthioanilides: A Novel Synthesis of 2,3-Disubstituted Indoles,” H. Tokuyama, T. Yamashita, M. T. Reding, Y. Kaburagi, and T. Fukuyama, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 121, 3791–3792 (1999). * ''Stereocontrolled Total Synthesis of (+)-Vinblastine'', S. Yokoshima, T. Ueda, S. Kobayashi, A. Sato, T. Kuboyama, H. Tokuyama, and T. Fukuyama, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 124, 2137–2139 (2002). * ''Total Synthesis of (+)-Yatakemycin'', K. Okano, H. Tokuyama, and T. Fukuyama, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 128, 7136–7137 (2006). * ''A Practical Synthesis of (–)-Oseltamivir'', N. Satoh, T. Akiba, S. Yokoshima, and T. Fukuyama, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 46, 5734–5736 (2007). * ''A Practical Synthesis of (–)-Kainic Acid'', S. Takita, S. Yokoshima, and T. Fukuyama, Org. Lett., 13, 2068–2070 (2011). * ''Total Synthesis of Ecteinascidin 743'', F. Kawagishi, T. Toma, T. Inui, S. Yokoshima, and T. Fukuyama, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 135, 13684–13687 (2013).

References

*
Homepage of Tohru FukuyamaCV of Fukuyama
1948 births Living people People from Anjō Japanese chemists Rice University faculty University of Tokyo faculty Harvard University alumni Nagoya University alumni {{chemist-stub