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Koji Nakanishi a bioorganic and natural products chemist, is Centennial Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and former Chairman of the Chemistry Department, Columbia University.
He was born in Hong Kong on May 11, 1925. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Nagoya University in 1947 from Prof. Fujio Egami. Following two years of post-graduate work with Prof. Louis Fieser at Harvard University, he returned to Nagoya University where he completed his Ph.D. in 1954 with Prof. Yoshimasa Hirata. He took a position as Assistant Professor at Nagoya, and then Professor of Chemistry at Tokyo Kyoiku University. In 1963 he moved to Tohoku University in Sendai and remained there until 1969 when he joined the faculty of Columbia University. In 1980 he became Centennial Professor of Chemistry. He was Chairman of the Chemistry Department, 1987-90.
He was a founding member and one of the six Directors of Research at the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya, the first Director of the nonprofit Suntory Institute for Bioorganic Research, Osaka, and he assisted the Brazilian government to set up a center of excellence in the Amazons, the Institute of Medicinal and Ecological Chemistry with its headquarters in São Paulo. In April 2001 he was asked to start a chemistry unit within Biosphere 2, Arizona, operated by Columbia University.
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