Yoshio Okamoto (岡本佳男; born 10 January 1941) is a Japanese chemist, who was awarded the 2019 Japan Prize for his…
Yoshio Okamoto (岡本佳男; born 10 January 1941) is a Japanese chemist, who was awarded the 2019 Japan Prize for his groundbreaking work in asymmetric polymerization and its practical applications in drug discovery. Okamoto was the first to prove that synthetic polymer conformations could be controllable, publishing work on asymmetric polymerization from 1979 onwards. This led to the development by Okamoto and others of helical polymers for use in high performance liquid chromatography columns (HPLC), enabling easy separation of chiral drug molecules.
Famous People Born in 1941
1941: 162 people
Takahiro Yokomichi (横路 孝弘, Yokomichi Takahiro; 3 January 1941 – 2 February 2023) was a Japanese politician who belonged…
Takahiro Yokomichi (横路 孝弘, Yokomichi Takahiro; 3 January 1941 – 2 February 2023) was a Japanese politician who belonged to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and was a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature). A native of Sapporo, Hokkaidō, and graduate of the University of Tokyo, he was elected to the first of his five terms in the House of Representatives in 1969 as a member of the Japan Socialist Party in the electoral district of his late father Setsuo. He left the House of Representatives and was elected to be the Governor of Hokkaidō. He served for three terms from 1983 to 1995. After finishing his term as governor, he left the Socialist Party, joining the DPJ. In 1996 he was re-elected to the House of Representatives. He was the leader of the most left-leaning faction in the DPJ. After the victory of 2009 elections, then-DPJ President Yukio Hatoyama named him as the next house speaker. In the 2012 general election Yokomichi lost his single-seat electorate but retained a seat in the Diet through the proportional representation system. He managed to regain his seat in the 2014 election and held it until he retired in 2017.
Shima Iwashita (Japanese: 岩下志麻, Hepburn: Iwashita Shima; born 3 January 1941) is a Japanese stage and film actress who…
Shima Iwashita (Japanese: 岩下志麻, Hepburn: Iwashita Shima; born 3 January 1941) is a Japanese stage and film actress who has appeared in films of Yasujirō Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi and most frequently of Masahiro Shinoda, her husband. She is best known for starring in the Yakuza Wives series of yakuza films between 1986 and 1998. In 2000, Iwashita ranked tenth on Kinema Junpo's readers' poll of the top female movie stars of the 20th century. In 2025, she was ranked fourth in a poll conducted by Sankei Shimbun on the top actresses of the Shōwa era.
Kazuyoshi Akiyama (秋山 和慶, Akiyama Kazuyoshi; January 2, 1941 – January 26, 2025) was a Japanese conductor who held…
Kazuyoshi Akiyama (秋山 和慶, Akiyama Kazuyoshi; January 2, 1941 – January 26, 2025) was a Japanese conductor who held conducting posts of symphony orchestras in Japan, Canada and the U.S., such as the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra from 1964 for life, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra from 1972 to 1985, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 1993, and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra from 1998. Akiyama conducted the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra in the Japanese premieres of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, John Adams's El Niño and Helmut Lachenmann's Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, among others.
Kazue Sawai (沢井 一恵, Sawai Kazue; 1 January 1941 – 15 February 2026) was a Japanese koto player noted for her…
Kazue Sawai (沢井 一恵, Sawai Kazue; 1 January 1941 – 15 February 2026) was a Japanese koto player noted for her performance of contemporary classical music and free improvisation.
Te Sun Han (born 1941, Kiryū) is a Korean Japanese information theorist and winner of the 2010 Shannon Award. He is a…
Te Sun Han (born 1941, Kiryū) is a Korean Japanese information theorist and winner of the 2010 Shannon Award. He is a professor emeritus of The University of Electro-Communications. He has made significant contributions concerning the interference channel and information spectrum methods. Some of his work contributed to initial descriptions of the entropy cone. In 1990, he was elected an IEEE Fellow for contributions to the theory of multiuser information systems and distributed signal detection systems.
Koichiro Harada (原田 耕一郎, Harada Kōichirō) is a Japanese mathematician working on finite group theory.
Ginandjar Kartasasmita (born 9 April 1941 in Bandung, West Java) is an Indonesian politician. He served a five-year…
Ginandjar Kartasasmita (born 9 April 1941 in Bandung, West Java) is an Indonesian politician. He served a five-year term (2004–2009) as Speaker of Indonesia Regional Representative Council (DPD-RI).
Kunihiko Kasahara (笠原 邦彦, Kasahara Kunihiko) (born 1941) is a Japanese origami master. He has made more than a hundred…
Kunihiko Kasahara (笠原 邦彦, Kasahara Kunihiko) (born 1941) is a Japanese origami master. He has made more than a hundred origami models, from simple lion masks to complex modular origami, such as a small stellated dodecahedron. He does not specialize in what is known as "super complex origami", but rather he likes making simple, elegant animals, and modular designs such as polyhedra, as well as exploring the mathematics and geometry of origami. A book expressing both approaches is Origami for the Connoisseur (Kasahara and Takahama), which gathers modern innovations in polyhedral construction, featuring moderately difficult but accessible methods for producing the Platonic solids from single sheets, and much more. Kasahara is perhaps origami's most enthusiastic designer and collector of origami models that are variations on a cube, a number of which appear in Vol. 2 of a 2005 three volume work (presently available only in Japanese). Vol. 3 of the same work is devoted to another Kasahara interest: reverse engineering and diagramming classic Japanese origami models pictured in early works, such as zenbazuru (thousand origami cranes from the Hiden Senbazuru Orikata of 1797, one of the earliest known origami books), the origami art of folding multiple connected cranes out of a single sheet of paper. He has written many books, of which Origami Omnibus is his best known book available in English, and contains many of his models as well as outstanding classics by others.
Sōichi Besshi (別紙 壮一, Besshi Souichi; born 1941) is a retired Japanese anime producer from Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture.
Junichi Saga (佐賀 純一, Saga Jun'ichi; born 1941) is a Japanese countryside physician and writer whose work records…
Junichi Saga (佐賀 純一, Saga Jun'ichi; born 1941) is a Japanese countryside physician and writer whose work records countryside experiences of numerous individuals (typically, his patients).
Masako Seki (関 正子, Seki Masako; 1941 or 1942 – September 18, 2019) was an international table tennis player from Japan.