With great sadness we inform you that one of the Giants in Reproduction, Professor Ryuzo Yanagimachi, passed away on September 27, 2023. Yana, as everyone called him, was 95 years old. He was full of energy and full of vitality until the end. On the day he entered the hospital because of a fall at home, he had driven himself to and from work, was continuing work on his next manuscript, and was preparing a lecture to be presented when receiving the famous Kyoto Prize later this fall. He died from complications from the fall three weeks later.
Yana is considered by many the father of IVF and ICSI. Both of the now common tools of ART were based on his pioneering work over a 70 year span of productive research. While training many of our colleagues, he elucidated many of the mechanisms of mammalian fertilization, and his laboratory made a major contribution to the cloning field. Yana received the Distinguished Andrologist Award in 1988.
In addition to winning the Kyoto Prize this year, he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., in 2001. He will be missed by many collaborators, students and admirers of his work around the world.
Monika and Steve Ward