Nobel laureate Osamu Shimomura has died, according to the Associated Press. He was 90.
Shimomura, who worked at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Columbia University's Martin Chalfie and the University of California, San Diego's Roger Tsien for their work on green fluorescent protein. Shimomura was the first to isolate GFP from the Aequorea victoria jellyfish to find that it glows under UV light. Chalfie then demonstrated that GFP could be used as a molecular tag in biological experiments and Tsien, who died in 2016, explored how it worked and expanded its color palette.
Alex Palazzo noted at The Daily Transcript blog at the time that the Nobel was well earned. "Flip open any biomedical journal and you'll see why - Green Fluorescent Protein (aka GFP) is probably the most used gene in the world," he wrote.
The Japan Times adds that Shimomura, who was born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1926 and lived in various part of Japan before settling near Nagasaki, survived the US atomic bombing of the city in 1945, when he was 16. The AP notes that he often would call for nuclear weapons bans in his lectures.