Nagai, Nagayoshi

S. Kanao, Nagai Nagayoshi Den, Pharmaceutical Society of Japan, Tokyo, 1960, p. 270. 

On Dec. 21, when K. Inagaki called on the Ministry of Education to announce the formation of the Division, the officer, Willy Nagai (a son of Nagayoshi Nagai, a famous chemist in Japan whose wife was German),... 

The students studied in Europe became leaders of modem Japan in the Eras of Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-1926, the Era between Me(/7 and Showa). Among them, Nagayoshi Nagai (1845-1922) studied chemistiy in the laboratory of A. W. Hoffmann (1819-1892) in the University of Berlin, Germany and discovered ephe-drine (C,dH jNO) in mahuang, a Chinese medicine and succeeded the synthesis of this compound in 1885. 

On the other hand, Nagayoshi Nagai (1845—1929) et al. isolated ephed-rine, which will be discussed in Chapter 16.1. Also, Jokichi Takamine (1854-1922) succeeded in the isolation of adrenaline (epinephrine), and Umetaro Suzuki (1874-1943) discovered oryzanin. 

Research on the constituents of the ephedrae herba was advanced in the Meiji era (1868-1912) by MototadaYamashina, an assistant engineer of the Tokyo sanitation laboratory, and a crystalline component isolated from this plant material was reported in 1885 by Nagayoshi Nagai (1845-1929), the founder of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan. However, Yamashina died suddenly, unfortunately Thus, the first report of the existence of ephedrine was at the Meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society ofjapan on July 17,1885. The isolation of ephedrine as a crystalline form was achieved by Yuzo Hori, of the same laboratory as Yamashina, in 1887 [1]. However, it was not until 1892 that the first report of ephedrine appeared in the literature [2-5]. 

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