This fall, Osamu Shimomura, a Nobel laureate in chemistry known for his research on jellyfish, was on an island in the Seto Inland Sea that he often visited five decades ago to catch another luminous organism: sea fireflies.
The professor emeritus at Boston University was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry along with two American scientists for the discovery of green fluorescent protein in a jellyfish called Aequorea victoria.
But Shimomura, 85, said in an interview during his short stay in Japan that it was sea fireflies that laid the foundation for his becoming a chemist.