Hideyo Noguchi

Hideyo Noguchi (野口 英世, Noguchi Hideyo; November 9, 1876 – May 21, 1928), also known as Seisaku Noguchi (野口 清作, Noguchi Seisaku), was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist at the Rockefeller Institute known for his work on syphilis, serology, immunology, and contributing to the long term understanding of neurosyphilis.

Before the Rockefeller Institute, he was a research assistant to American physician Silas Weir Mitchell at the University of Pennsylvania laying the foundation to the fields of immunology and serology. He produced one of the first serums to treat North American rattlesnake bites alongside Thorvald Madsen at the Statens Serum Institute.

During his research, Noguchi was an early advocate for the wide spread use of antivenoms in the United States before its mass production. He wrote one of the foundational texts on the topic of venoms in his monograph, Snake Venoms: An Investigation of Venomous Snakes with Special Reference to the Phenomena of Their Venoms.

Beginning at the Rockefeller Institute, he was the first person in the United States to confirm the causative agent of syphilis, Treponema pallidum, after Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann first identified it in 1905 . His most notable achievement was identifying the agent of syphilis in the tissues of patients with general paresis and tabes dorsals, a late stage consequence of tertiary syphilis, establishing the conclusive link between the physical and mental manifestation of the disease. American educator and psychiatrist John Clare Whitehorn considered the discovery an outstanding psychiatric achievement.

Later in his career, Noguchi developed the first serum to give partial immunity to Rocky mountain spotted fever, a notoriously lethal disease before treatment was discovered.

Noguchi's died from yellow fever during an expedition to Africa in search for the cause of the same disease. Posthumously, his work on yellow fever was overturned. Noguchi mistaking it as a bacteria confusing it for a different tropical disease. Noguchi's claims on discovering the causative agent of rabies, poliomyelitis, trachoma were overturned and his pure culture of syphilis could not be reproduced. Although unsuccessful he brought more attention to often neglected obscure tropical diseases. Except he did prove Carrions disease and verruca peruana were the same species alongside fellow researcher Evelyn Tilden continuing his research after his death.

Noguchi was one of the first scientists to gain international acclaim for his scientific contributions from Japan, being nominated several times for a Nobel prize in medicine between 1913 and 1927. Although, he did not receive the prize. Today, he's most known for being featured on the yen and the Hideyo Noguchi Africa prize given in his honor.