Yasui Kono

Kono Yasui (保井コノ, 16 February 1880 – 24 March 1971) was a Japanese biologist and cytologist. In 1927, she became the first Japanese woman to receive a doctoral degree in science.

Yasui was born in Kagawa Prefecture in 1880. She graduated from Kagawa Prefecture Normal School in 1898 and the Division of Science at the Women's Higher Normal School in 1902. She taught at Gifu Girls' Higher School and Kanda Girls' School until 1905, when a graduate course was established at the Women's Higher Normal School. She was the first woman to enter the course with a major in science research; she focused on zoology and botany. She published a paper about the Weberian apparatus of carp fish in Zoological Science in 1905, becoming the first woman published in the journal. Her research on the aquatic fern Salvinia natans was published in the Journal of Plant Sciences and the British journal Annals of Botany, marking the first publication of a Japanese woman's research in a foreign journal. She completed the graduate program at Women's Higher Normal School in 1907 and became an assistant professor at the school.

When Yasui applied to the Japanese Ministry of Education to study abroad, she was only allowed on the condition that she listed "home economics research" alongside "scientific research" on her application and that she agreed not to marry and instead commit herself to her research. She traveled to Germany and the United States in 1914 to perform cytological research at the University of Chicago. She travelled to Harvard University in 1915, where she conducted research on coal under Professor E. C. Jeffrey. She returned to Japan in June 1916 and continued researching coal at Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) until 1927. She taught genetics there from 1918 to 1939, and was made a professor at the Women's Higher Normal School in Tokyo in 1919. She completed her doctoral thesis, "Studies on the structure of lignite, brown coal, and bituminous coal in Japan", in 1927, becoming the first woman in Japan to complete a doctorate in science.

In 1929, Yasui founded the cytology journal Cytologia. From 1924 onwards, she researched the genetics of poppies, corn and Tradescantia species, and in 1945 she began a survey of plants that had been affected by nuclear fallout after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Ochanomizu University was established under its current name in 1949, Yasui was appointed professor. She retired in 1952, becoming a professor emerita. By 1957 she had published a total of 99 scientific papers. She was awarded a Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1955 and conferred the Order of the Precious Crown, Third Class, Butterfly in 1965. She died in Bunkyō Ward, Tokyo, on 24 March 1971.