Motoo Kimura 103in the Morgan Drosophila laboratory in the United States. Komai encouraged
Kimura to study abroad and with the help of two American geneticists at the
Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission Kimura was able to put together enough
funds to come to the United States. He had hoped to study with Sewall Wright,
but Wright was retiring and not accepting students, so he recommended Iowa
State College to study with America’s leading animal breeder, Jay L. Lush.
The main thrust of work at Iowa State was analysis of genetic variance, par-
ticularly subdivision of epistatic components. Although Kimura understood this
work, his heart was not in it. He wanted to work on stochastic processes in the
Fisher-Wright tradition. He then asked me if, at the end of his year at Iowa State,
he could study at Wisconsin. I was delighted to have a student of such talent and
accomplishment. Another plus was that Sewall Wright was moving to Wisconsin.
So Kimura moved to Wisconsin and at last had a chance to get well acquainted
with his hero and to work on his chosen subject. Curiously, although they often
spoke, Wright and Kimura did not work together; their mathematical methods
were too different.
The circumstances of my meeting Kimura were quite remarkable. During the
sessions of the Genetics Society of America, which that year was held at the
University of Wisconsin, I encountered a Japanese person who was had clearly lost
his way. Earlier, my student Newton Morton, who was working for the Atomic
Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan had discovered Kimura’s work and sent me
some reprints. I must have been one of a very small handful of people who had
ever heard of Kimura, and this immediately started a friendship. He had brought
with him a paper, written on the long trip across the Pacific. It was a study
of fluctuating selection coefficients, and he had discovered a transformation that
converted a very difficult partial differential equation into the well-understood
equation of heat diffusion. I helped him with the English and with getting it into
print[Kimura, 1954].
The two years that Kimura spent as a graduate student at the University of
Wisconsin were astonishingly productive. He wrote several path-breaking papers,
while at the same time taking courses, passing language exams, and filling various
requirements for the Ph.D., which he received in 1956.
Returning to Japan, he remained at the National Institute of Genetics for the
rest of his life, except for a several short visiting appointments throughout Europe
and the United States. In particular, he returned several times to the University of
Wisconsin, where he and I continued our cooperative research. Likewise, I found
several opportunities to work in Japan, so we continued our collaboration for the
rest of his life.
Finally, he contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). His
last months saw only steady physical deterioration. He died on his 70th birth-
day anniversary, November 13, 1994. The death was accidental, following a fall,
but I think it was merciful, since he had nothing to look forward to but further
deterioration.
Kimura has been honored throughout the world, and in particular in his birth-