Described as one of the greatest Japanese geochemists and hailed as an "iron scientist", Katsuko Saruhashi would have been 98 years old on March 21.
In her honour, Google is changing its logo in 15 countries to an illustration of her.
But in her lifetime, she was not always recognised for her achievements and discrimination was an everyday affair.
This is her story:
World War II experience
Saruhashi was born in Tokyo in 1920 to Kuniharu and Kuno Saruhashi . As a child, she was often described as a shy and introverted little girl.
. As a child, she was often described as a shy and introverted little girl. A young Saruhashi sat in primary school watching raindrops slide down a window and wondered what made it rain.
Saruhashi had a passion for education that was also supported by her mother after their shared experience of the Second World War. She was convinced that women needed to acquire technical knowledge to gain independence.
She attended Toho University (then known as the Imperial Women's College of Science) and graduated in 1943.
First doctorate
While studying, Saruhashi met someone who would become her future mentor. Miyake Yasuo offered her a position at the Meteorological Research Institute.
During her time there she had the opportunity to study the CO2 levels in seawater.
"Now everyone is concerned about carbon dioxide, but at the time nobody was," she said, when she started she had to design her own techniques for measuring the gas.
She showed that the Pacific Oceans releases about twice as much carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere as it absorbs, meaning it could not help combat climate change.
For her work, she became the first woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Tokyo in 1957.
Nuclear bombs
Saruhashi and her team were also recognised for being part of the first group in the world to look into the effects of bombs tested by the US and the Soviet Union in the world's atmosphere.
She discovered that radioactivity reached the cost of Japan. She was one the firsts to research on the issues of nuclear testing; her evidence was later used to stop those governments from performing nuclear tests.
Despite her pioneering work, Saruhashi is almost never cited in Western debates on climate change or the dangers of radiation testing.
She died on September 29, 2007, at the age of 87.
Recognition
Saruhashi was the first woman to be awarded a doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Tokyo in 1957.
She was the first woman to be elected as the member of the Science Council of Japan, the country’s parliament of science in 1980.
She was the first woman to receive the Miyake Prize for geochemistry in 1985, and she established her own prize as well known as the Suruhashi prize which recognises female scientists who act as mentors and role models for younger female scientists.
"I wanted to highlight the capabilities of women scientists. Until now, those capabilities have been secret, under the surface," she was quoted saying.
In 1993, she won the Tanaka Prize from the Society of Sea Water Sciences.
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Japanese geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi, whose research helped reveal the insidious spread of radioactive fallout from the US nuclear testing ground in the Pacific. If she were still alive, today would have been her 98th birthday.
In 1957, Saruhashi became the first woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in Japan. Her work focused on measuring the molecules in seawater, like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and also radioactive molecules like cesium-137. Just 12 years before she received her PhD, the United States dropped atomic bombs that devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the US continued to unleash a torrent of radioactive fallout in the Pacific as it tested bigger and bigger bombs. By 1958, the US had exploded 67 nuclear devices around the Marshall Islands — leaving a long legacy of contamination behind.
Saruhashi worked at the Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo to develop more sensitive methods of measuring radioactive fallout. It was a challenging task, says Toshihiro Higuchi, a historian at Georgetown University and expert on Cold War science. “The amount of fallout that we are talking about is really tiny, and then we are talking about the vast ocean,” he says.
Saruhashi and her colleagues discovered that fallout didn’t disperse evenly in the ocean. The concentrations of radioactive cesium near Japan, for example, were much higher than the concentrations along the West Coast of the US. The team proposed that the high levels were because Japan is downstream of the Pacific nuclear testing ground. But others suspected that the measurements might be off, Higuchi says. “There was a controversy over her argument that the radioactive fallout in seawater was more than what they used to think.”
To settle the dispute, the US Atomic Energy Commission funded a lab swap. Saruhashi took a six-month leave of absence from her work at the Central Meteorological Observatory in Japan and visited Scripps Institute of Oceanography. There, she and oceanographer Ted Folsom compared their methods and discovered that Saruhashi’s technique was spot-on: the two teams’ methods produced almost identical results.
Saruhashi worked to support female scientists, and in 1958 she co-founded the Society of Japanese Women Scientists, which pushed for nuclear disarmament and peace. “She was very conscious of the social responsibility of scientists in general,” Higuchi says. Saruhashi died in 2007. But she left behind a legacy of scientific research, including an award called the Saruhashi Prize for top natural scientists who are women. “She was a trailblazer,” Higuchi says.
Liputan6.com, Jakarta - Hari ini Google Doodle kembali merayakan prestasi seorang wanita bernama Katsuko Saruhashi. Ia merupakan ahli Geokimia asal Jepang.
Wanita tersebut muncul dengan memakai kacamata besar, dan berdiri dengan latar ombak di belakangnya yang membentuk tulisan " Google ".
Lalu, apa hubungan ahli geokimia dengan lautan? Yang jelas, Katsuko Saruhashi bukanlah Menteri Kelautan dan Perikanan asal Jepang. Ia adalah wanita yang membantu meneliti efek tes nuklir di lautan. Karenanya, Google memberikan apresiasi lewat doodle terbaru ini.
Hal itu dilakukan setelah Amerika Serikat (AS) melaksanakan uji nuklir pada 1954 di area Kepulauan Marshall, dan ternyata ledakannya lebih kuat dari perkiraan.
Akibatnya, kapal pemancing ikan asal Jepang yang sedang beroperasi di area tersebut terkena luruhan (debu-debu) nuklir, dan terkena penyakit hepatitis.
Saruhashi akhirnya yang meneliti kasus ini, ia juga meneliti hujan asam dan efek-efeknya.
Berbagai prestasi di bidang Geokimia ditoreh oleh Saruhashi, mulai dari Doktor bidang kimia pertama di Universitas Tokyo, serta menjadi wanita pertama yang memenangkan penghargaan ilmiah bergengsi di Jepang.
Saruhashi bermimpi agar suatu hari nanti, pria dan wanita dapat sejajar di bidang Sains dan Teknologi.
SERAMBINEWS.COM – Untuk mengenang dan memberikan penghargaan khusus kepada orang yang berjasa di berbagai bidang di dunia, Google menampilkannya di laman depan mesin pencarian terbesar tersebut.
Hari ini, Kamis (22/3/2018), pihaknya menampilkan sosok Katsuko Saruhashi. Tampakannya sosok tersebut biasa saja.
Digambarkan sosok wanita paru baya berkacamata dengan rambut cepat tengah memegang clipboard. Backgroundnya gelombang laut berwarna biru.
Wanita dengan mata sipit tersebut terlihat biasa, namun siapa sangka jasanya sangat besar untuk dunia.
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Dilansir dari Tribun Timur, berikut tujuh fakta tentang Katsuko Saruhashi:
Katsuko Saruhashi lahir di Tokyo, Jepang, 22 Maret 1920.
