Nobel laureate Hideki Shirakawa will be among the six people to receive this year's Order of Culture from the Emperor at the Imperial Palace on Culture Day on Nov. 3, government officials said Tuesday.
The five other recipients are sinologist Tadao Ishikawa, 78; leather craftswoman Fukuko Okubo, 81; calligrapher Kason Sugioka, 87; organic chemist Ryoji Noyori, 62; and actress Isuzu Yamada, 83. It is the first time for two women to receive the award at the same time, the officials said.
Shirakawa, 64, won the 2000 Nobel Prize for chemistry together with U.S. physicist Alan Heeger and chemist Alan MacDiarmid for their discovery and subsequent development of conductive polymers. Shirakawa, professor emeritus of the University of Tsukuba, and the two Americans demonstrated that plastics can conduct electricity.