Autobiography of Fumio Hirata

Abstract

Born in Nagasaki prefecture in Japan, right after the world war two, I grew up in a country side of Fukuoka prefecture, where I had my education until high school. After graduating from the high school, I entered Hokkaido University to study the natural science. The largest turning point as a student came to me when I knocked on the office door of Prof. Arakawa in 1969, who became my thesis advisor, in order to consult my study in the graduate course. He told me enthusiastically how “water” and “aqueous solutions” are important in science, how challenging it is to understand the problems experimentally as well as theoretically, and how interesting it is in the biological connections....