Google Doodle pays tribute to Japanese Green Tea Researcher Michiyo Tsujimura

Google Doodle on Friday (September 17, 2021) honours the pioneering work of Michiyo Tsujimura as she earned herself the title of the first woman doctor of agriculture in Japan.

Michiyo Tsujimura was born on September 17, 1888, in the city of Okegawa in the Saitama Prefecture, Japan. In the world of science, Tsujimura is a popular name due to her groundbreaking research on the nutritional benefits of green tea.

The doodle shares a graphical illustration of Tsujimura working in her laboratory with a cup of green tea, a beaker and some green tea leaves by her side.

Google posted the Doodle on Twitter saying, “For Japanese educator & biochemist Michiyo Tsujimura, scientific advancement was her cup of tea.” The post has been shared below:

“Because of her breakthrough research, we now know what compounds make green tea beneficial to human health,” Google’s tweet on Michiyo Tsujimura reads.

Being a female scientist in those days, she was not readily accepted during the course of her work. Nevertheless, she first got recognition only when she was able to discover that green tea had vitamin C in 1924 along with her colleague Seitaro Miura.

They even published an article titled “On Vitamin C in Green Tea” which led to an increase in the exporting of green tea to North America. After a year, she isolated tannin, an even more bitter compound.

With time she continued her research work on green tea and in 1929, she further isolated catechin – an ingredient that makes the tea bitter.