iDarwin AS 0021 (2021 AD)

Volume 1

Introduction of published booiDarwin volume 1, page 59-6
Published on June 17, AS 0021 (2021 AD)“My Life as a Molecular Evolutionist” by Masatoshi NEI (2020SAITOU Naruy
Population Genetics Laboratory, National Institute of Genetics (Main appointment
School of Medicine, University of the Ryukyu
Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, University to Toky
Department of Genetics, School of Life Science, Graduate University for Advanced Studie
1111 Yata, Mishima, 411-8540, Japa
Email: saitounr@nig.ac.jp)so)nn						:sykn	

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Dr. Masatoshi NEI (1931-), published one book in December 2020 titled “My Life as a Molecular Evolutionist” from Temple University. He is now 90years old, and this book covers his life as scientist for more than 70 years. Although this book has ISBN number (978-1-03-437134-2), it was not listed
in Amazon.com. However, anonynous brief introduction of this book appeared recently in Molecular Biology and Evolution (https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab058) in April 2021. You can buy this book through https://press.arctangent.com/mnmemoir/. When I sent greeting email to Dr. NEI on thisyear’s January 2nd, his birthday, he mentioned publication of this book in reply email. I thus contacted Dr. Sudhir Kumar and bought one copy, andread it
NEI (2020) consists of nine chapters as follows
Chapter 1: Introductio
Chapter 2: My Childhoo
Chapter 3: University Educatio
Chapter 4: Studies in the US
Chapter 5: National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Japa
Chapter 6: Brown Universit
Chapter 7: University of Texas Health Science Center at Housto
Chapter 8: Pennsylvania State Universit
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iDarwin AS 0021 (2021 AD)

Volume 1Chapter 9: Temple Universit
Eplilogue and Acknowlegements; Table 1 – Collaborators; References; IndeBook cover is designed by Keitaro NEI, Dr. NEI’s son. Table 1 lists 23 graduate students, 38 postdoctoral fellows, and 48 visiting scholars andcollaborators of Dr. NEI. There are many photos in this book, and Dr. NEI appears in ~30 photos. You can nd his photo when he was 3-4 years old at
page 15. His wife, Nobuko also appears in 9 photos. You can also nd Dr. KIMURA Motoo (p. 48), Dr. KOJIMA Ken-ichi (p. 44), Drs. FrankSTEWART and Bruce R. LEVIN (p. 58), Dr. Jack SCHULL (p. 68), Drs. GOJOBORI Takashi and TAJIMA Fumio (p. 72), Drs. Simon EASTEAL andTAKAHATA Naoyuki (p. 128), Drs. Andrew CLARKl, Helen Piontkivska, TAKEZAKI Naoko, and NIIMURA Yoshihito (p. 156). I am honored toappear in page 109 with Dr. Paul Fuest, probably taken at Dr. GOJOBORI Takashi’s house in Mishima
I would like to summarize “Chronological Timeline” of Chapter 1 as follows with some additional information. Dr. Masatoshi NEI was born onJanuary 2nd, 1931 in Naka, Miyazaki Prefecuture, Japan. He went to Naka elementary school during April 1937 and March 1943, and another twoyears at Higher Education Part in this elementary school. He wen to Miyazaki Agricultural Middle School during April 1945 and March 1948. He went
to Ohyodo High School (later Miyazaki Nishi High School) in Miyazaki city during April 1948 and March 1949. He went to Fuculty of Agriculture,
The University of Miyazaki during April 1949 and March 1953, and receieved Bachelor of Science digree. Amazingly, he published single-author
paper when he was still undergratude student (NEI 1953). He went to Fuculty of Agriculture, Kyoto University as master course student (during April
1953 and March 1955) and as doctoral course student (during April 1955 and March 1959). He received Master of Agricultural Science and Doctor ofAgricultural Science (equivalent to Ph.D. in USA system) from Kyoto University in March 1955 and in March 1959, respectively. His academicsupervisor was Professor SHAKUDO Katsumi, and I found four papers probably based on his doctoral thesis (NEI and SHAKUDO 1956, 1957,1958a, 1958b). He also published one sigle-authored paper (NEI 1956). He was Assistant Professor at Fuculty of Agriculture, Kyoto University forthree years, during April 1958 and March 1961. He was Head of Department of Population Genetics, National Institutre of Radiological Sciences,Chiba, Japan for eight yeas, during April 1961 and March 1969.
He was Associate Professor, later Full Professor at Department of Population Biology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, forslightly more than three years, during April 1969 and June 1972. He was Full Professor at Center for Demographic and Population Genetics (CDPG),
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS), University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Texas, USA for 18 years during July 1972and June 1990. He was Director at the Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics and Full Professor at Departement of Biology, Pennsylvania StateUniversity, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA for 25 years during July 1990 and June 2015. He is Adjunct Professor at Institute for Genomics andEvolutionary Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia from July 2015
Dr. NEI has his own website at Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.jp/citations?user=VxOmZDgAAAAJ&hl=ja&oi=ao. I am happy thatour paper on Neighbor-Joining method (SAITOU and NEI, 1987) has highest citation (62,260 as of May 11, 2021), followed by MEGA5 of TAMURA

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Volume 1et al. (2011) (43,093 citations), MEGA6 of TAMURA et al. (2013) (37,709 citations) and MEGA4 of TAMURA et al. (2007) (33,680 citations). Fifth
highest citation was “Molecular Evolutionary Genetics” (NEI 1987). Sixth and seventh highest citations (15,738 and 14,247, respetively) are again
MEGA2 (KUMAR et al. 2001) and MEGA3 (KUMAR et al. 2004). Eighth to eleventh highest citations was rst-authored by Dr. NEI (NEI 1978, NEIand LI 1979, NEI 1987, and NEI 1973), and they all exceeded 10,000. The last paper exceeding 10,000 citations as of May 11, 2021 is TAMURA andNEI (1993). Therefore, there are 12 publications by Dr. NEI which exceeded 10,000 citations. It is arleady amazing, but there are 16 more publications
that exceeded 1,000 citations. There are over 110 publications by Dr. NEI whose citations are more than 100. However, we have to careful on Google
Scholar, for I could not nd NEI (1972), celebrated paper on Nei’s genetic distance in Google Scholar.
In any case, Dr. NEI is very productive and world-renowned scientist. Following is list of honors Dr. NEI received so far, based on“Chronological Timeline” of Chapter 1
1977: Japan Society of Human Genetics Awar
1989: Honorary member, Genetics Society of Japa
1990: Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Scienc
1993: Fellow, American Association For the Advancement of Scienc
1994: President, Society for Molecular Biology and Evolutio
1996: Honorary member, Japan Society of Human Genetic
1997: Member, National Academy of Sciences, US
1999: President, American Genetic Associatio
2000: Honorary member, Japan Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetic
2000: Establishment of Masatoshi Nei Annual Lecture for the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolutio
2001: Honorary member, Japan Society of Animal Genetics and Breedin
2002: International Prize for Biology, Japan Society for Promotion of Scienc
2002: Honorary Doctorate, University of Miyazak
2003: Barbara Bowman Award, Texas Genetics Societ
2006: Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, Genetics Society of Americ
2013: Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, Inamori Foundatio
2017: John Scott Award, the Board of Directors of City Trusts of the City of Philadelphi
I would like to add that in Miyazaki University which he attendded for four years, during April 1949 and March 1953, opened exhibition corner of Dr.
NEI at University Library rst oor in July 2020 (see https://www.miyazaki-u.ac.jp/newsrelease/topics-info/post-529.html).

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Volume 1

Reference
KUMAR Sudhir et al. (2001) MEGA2: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis software. Bioinformatics, vol. 17, pp. 1244-1245
KUMAR Sudhir et al. (2004) MEGA3: integrated software for molecular evolutionary genetics analysis and sequence alignment. Brie ngs in Bioinformatics, vol. 5, pp. 150-163
NEI Masatoshi (1953) Mathematical studies on the breeding behavior of partially allogamous plants. Japanese Journal of Breeding, vol. 3, pp. 1-5.
NEI Masatoshi (1956) The test of signi cance for heritabiligy estimates. Japanese Journal of Breeding, vol. 5, pp. 213-219.
NEI Masatoshi (1972) Genetic distance between populations. American Naturalist, vol. 106, pp. 283-292
NEI Masatoshi (1973) Analysis of gene diversity in subdivided populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, vol. 70, pp. 3321-3323
NEI Masatoshi (1978) Estimation of average heterozygosity and genetic distance from a small number of individuals. Genetics, vol. 89, pp. 583-590
NEI Masatoshi (1987) Molecular Evolutionary Genetics. Columbina University Press, New York
NEI Masatoshi (1987) Chapter 9 “Genetic distance between populations”. Pp. 208-253, Molecular Evolutionary Genetics. Columbina University Press, New York
NEI Masatoshi (2020) My Life as a Molecular Evolutionist. Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia
NEI Masatoshi and SHAKUDO Katsumi (1956) Genetic analysis of covariation in quantitative characters. I. The components of covariance and the test of change in correlation. TheJapanese Journal of Genetics, vol. 31, pp. 201-206
NEI Masatoshi and SHAKUDO Katsumi (1957) Genetic parameters and environments II. Heritability and genetic correlation in F2 of some agronomic characters in rice plant. The
Japanese Journal of Genetics, vol. 32, pp. 235-241
NEI Masatoshi and SHAKUDO Katsumi (1958a) The estimation of outcrossing in natural populations. The Japanese Journal of Genetics, vol. 33, pp. 46-51
NEI Masatoshi and SHAKUDO Katsumi (1958b) The genetic variance and heritability in partially allogamous plant populations. Japanese Journal of Breeding, vol. 7, pp. 221-227
SAITOU Naruya and Masatoshi NEI (1987) The neighbor-joining method: a new method for reconstructing phylogenetic trees. Molecular Biology and Evolution, vol. 4, pp.
406-425
TAMURA Koichiro and Masatoshi NEI (1993) Estimation of the number of nucleotide substitutions in the control region of mitochondrial DNA in humans and chimpanzees.
Molecular Biology and Evolution, vol. 10, pp. 512-526
TAMURA Koichiro et al. (2007) MEGA4: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis (MEGA) software version 4.0. Molecular Biology and Evolution, vol. 24, pp. 1596-1599
TAMURA Koichiro et al. (2011) MEGA5: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods.
Molecular Biology and Evolution, vol. 28, pp. 2731-2739
TAMURA Koichiro et al. (2013) MEGA6: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis version 6.0. Molecular Biology and Evolution, vol. 30, pp. 2725-2729================================Publication history of this article
May 21, AS 0021: Book Introduction manuscript was submitted from Dr. SAITOU Naruya to iDarwin (reviewed by Dr. NOZAWA Masafumi
May 21, AS 0021: review result was sent from Dr. NOZAWA to Dr. SAITO
June 14, AS 0021: revision was sent from Dr. SAITOU to Dr. NOZAW
June 15, AS 0021: revision was accepted for iDarwin by Dr. NOZAW
June 17, AS 0021: proof was prepared by Dr. SAITOU.

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