Yamada Conference LXVIInternational conference on nanostructure-enhanced photo-energy conversion
June 3-6, 2012, Tokyo Japan
A closing remark in the Banquet
Hiroshi Masuhara, Chair Professor of National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am much honored to speak two points as a closing remark. In Europe Nobel
symposium, Solvay Symposium, and others are well known as traditional and high levelmeetings organized by private foundations. In Japan we also have had such meetings
and the most representative one is Yamada Conference. This Conference is supported byYamada Science Foundation which was established in 1977 in Osaka based on thegenerosity of Mr. Kiro Yamada. Mr. Yamada was the president of Rohto Pharmaceutical
Company Limited and recognized that creative, unconstrained, basic research isindispensable for the future welfare and prosperity of mankind and he has been deeply
concerned with its promotion. Today I went to a drug store and bought this eye lotion
prepared by Rohto Pharmaceutical Company to show it to you. Please note that Rohto
Company is not top-class (sorry to Mr. Yamada) as a pharmaceutical industry, so thisConference indicates how Mr. Yamada sincerely considered the importance of science.
Indeed I know that his son was a professor of Osaka University in Toyonaka campus
and a famous solid state physicist, as I was a research associate in the same campus
and saw him at that time.
I visited the WEB site of Yamada Science Research Foundation and understood that 65
conferences had been organized till 2012 and mostly related to physics. I found ourmemorial professors in the list of the Conferences as a Chair of chemistry-related
conference, Prof. Yonezo Morino in 1979 and Prof. Hideo Akamatu in 1980. In 1991 Prof.
Noboru Mataga, my supervisor, organized Yamada Conference on Dynamics andMechanism of Photoinduced Electron Transfer and related Phenomena and I worked as
an organizing committee member. We published its proceedings from Norht-Holland.
Here I will ask you to pay your attention to the fact that the chemistry-related
conferences are minor (about 10 %) as the Yamada Conference and Prof. Hiroaki
Misawa, our organizer, is the first chairperson from Hokkaido University. Also from thisviewpoint we would like to thank Professor Misawa and organizers for their greatefforts.

Please allow me to talk a little about my research history. In chemistry time-resolution
has received much attention while space-resolution did not. I myself started my carrier
as a physical photochemist using pulsed lasers; initially nanosecond laser photolysis,
then picosecond, and later femtosecond. The improvement of time-resolved spectroscopy
and photochemistry was one of our works, while I felt some saturation in this trend. In
1988 I had a chance to conduct a big JST ERATO project under which I could hire 15
posdocs with 2 billion JPY, when I decided to start time-and space-resolved chemistry;
ps-μm chemistry at that time. Tonight I have no time to talk about this story, but I
clearly say that the ps-μm chemistry is now developed to nm-fs chemistry as you see inthis Conference. My decision in middle 1980’s is confirmed now. This area is now soimportant in physical chemistry, which is clearly demonstrated here as we have theformer and present editor-in-chiefs of Journal of Physical Chemistry, Prof. M. A.
El-Sayed and G. C. Shatz as plenary lecturers here. It is very difficult to say about ourfuture science, but I believe that our efforts along the stories presented here will surely
be promising.
Thank you very much for your kind attention. Good night!