Michiyo Tsujimura, PhD, was the first female doctor of agriculture in Japan. Her research career began at Hokkaido Imperial University as a unpaid laboratory assistant in the food nutritional laboratory. In 1923, she transferred to RIKEN, a national scientific research institute in Japan. In 1924, Tsujimura, and her colleague Seitaro Miura, were the first to discover that green tea contains vitamin C. Tsujimura also isolated catechin, tannin and gallocatechin from green tea, constituents with anticancer properties. For her research, in 1956 she was awarded the Japan Prize of Agricultural Science and conferred the Order of the Precious Crown of the Fourth Class in 1968.
Read more at Asia Research News.