Ryōji Noyori was born in
Kobe, Japan. Early in his school days Ryoji was interested in physics. His interest was kindled by the famous physicist
Hideki Yukawa (1949
Nobel Prize in Physics winner), a close friend of his father. Later, he became fascinated with chemistry, after hearing a presentation on
nylon at an industrial exposition. He saw the power of chemistry as being the ability to "produce high value from almost nothing". He was a student at the School of Engineering (Department of Industrial Chemistry) of the
Kyoto University, where he graduated in 1961. He subsequently obtained a
Master's degree in
Industrial Chemistry from the Graduate School of Engineering of the
Kyoto University. Between 1963 and 1967, he was a research associate at the School of Engineering of the
Kyoto University, and an instructor in the research group of
Hitoshi Nozaki. Noyori obtained a
Doctor of Engineering degree (DEng) from the
Kyoto University in 1967. He became an associate professor at the same university in 1968. After postdoctoral work with
Elias J. Corey at
Harvard he returned to Nagoya, becoming a full professor in 1972. He is still based at Nagoya, and served as president of
RIKEN, a multi-site national research initiative with an annual budget of $800 million, from 2003 to 2015. ==Research==