Ume Tange Ume_Tange
Period One: Profile Period Two:Research Activity Period Three: Impact on Our Lives
Period Four: Virtual Science Lab Tange Top Page
 Period Two: Research Activity
What sort of research did Dr. Tange conduct?
Tange's studies in the United States were sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Education and Home Ministry, which called on her not only to conduct her own studies of food nutrition but also to carry out a survey of American facilities, including those devoted to science education and child nutrition. Tange accompanied a nurse to a health facility for impoverished women and, while assisting with nursing duties, studied the kind of diet the women were getting as part of their treatment. She also studied the diet of elementary school children. In the nutrition department of Columbia University, she experimented on guinea pigs to clarify the role of vitamin C in nutrition and analyzed changes in the quantity of nitrogen and phosphorus in the brains of animals that were fed oxidized fat.

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Ume Tange smiles after receiving a Ph.D. in agriculture, her second, from Tokyo Imperial University.
At Johns Hopkins, Tange studied nutrition and biochemistry and displayed superb technique in her experiments in the distillation and synthesis of organic compounds. She provided a comprehensive description of the properties of sterols--important organic compounds of which cholesterol is one type--in her dissertation on the subject. This excellent thesis earned her first of two Ph.Ds.

After returning to Japan, Tange devoted herself to research on vitamins at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research. In her experiments with mice she had few rivals; she carefully selected healthy mice, tended them meticulously, and obtained highly accurate data from them. She conducted research on numerous topics, including the nutrition disorders that result when fat is removed from the diet, the nutritional value of seaweed, and the nutrients missing from a diet based on white rice.
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