Google honors green tea researcher Michiyo Tsujimura with a new Doodle



Google is paying homage to educator and biochemist Michiyo Tsujimura with a new Doodle. Image courtesy of Google

Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Google is celebrating educator and biochemist Michiyo Tsujimura, who researched the nutritional benefits of green tea, with a new Doodle.

Google's homepage on Friday features artwork of Tsujimura studying green tea inside of a lab. The Doodle was created in honor of her 133rd birthday.

Tsujimura was born on this day in 1888 in the Okegawa, Saitama Prefecture of Japan. She studied Japanese silkworms at Hokkaido Imperial University in 1920 before she transferred to Tokyo Imperial University to study the biochemistry of green tea.

Tsujimura worked with Dr. Umetaro Suzuki, who had previously discovered vitamin B1. The duo found that green tea contained high amounts of vitamin C.

Tsujimura isolated catechin, a bitter ingredient of tea in 1929 and then later isolated the more bitter compound tannin. The findings helped her form her doctoral thesis titled "On the Chemical Components of Green Tea."

The researcher graduated as Japan's first woman doctor of agriculture in 1932 and became the first Dean of the Faculty of Home Economics at Tokyo Women's Higher Normal School in 1950.

A stone memorial made in honor of Tsujimura is located in Okegawa City.