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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. |
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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. |
