Kikuchi Dairoku

Baron Kikuchi Dairoku

Born	(1855-03-17)17 March 1855 Edo, Japan
Died	19 August 1917(1917-08-19) (aged 62) Tokyo, Japan
Alma mater	St John's College, Cambridge
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics

Signature

Baron Kikuchi Dairoku (菊池大麓, 17 March 1855 – 19 August 1917) was a Japanese mathematician, educator, and education administrator during the Meiji era. After earning degrees in mathematics and physics from St John's College at the University of Cambridge, he became one of the first Japanese professors of mathematics at the University of Tokyo. Later in his life, he served as president of the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Gakushuin, and the Riken Institute.

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Biography

Early life and family

Kikuchi was born in Edo (present-day Tokyo), as the second son of Mitsukuri Shūhei, a professor at Bansho Shirabesho, himself the adopted son of Mitsukuri Gempo, a Shogunate professor. The Mitsukuri family had distinguished themselves as scholars, and were at the centre of Japan's educational system in the Meiji era. His grandfather had been a student of Dutch studies ("rangaku").

Kikuchi Dairoku changed his surname from Mitsukuri to Kikuchi upon succeeding as the heir to his father's original family; the requisite legal procedures were completed in 1877.^[1]

Education

After attending the Bansho Shirabesho, the Shogunal institute for western studies, he was sent to Great Britain, in 1866, at age 11, the youngest of a group of Japanese sent by the Tokugawa shogunate to the University College School, on the advice of the then British foreign minister Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby.

Kikuchi returned to England in 1870 and was the first Japanese student to graduate from the University of Cambridge (St. John's College) and the only one to graduate from the University of London in the 19th century.^[2] His specialisation was in physics and mathematics. In 1884 he attended the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., and the master class of Kelvin in Baltimore.

Career

After returning to Japan, Kikuchi later became president of Tokyo Imperial University, Minister of Education (1901–1903) and president of Kyoto Imperial University. In 1909 he lectured in London on Japanese Education^[3] and 1910 at New York on New Japan: Its Intellectual and Moral Development.^[4]

His textbook on elementary geometry was the most widely used geometry textbook in Japan until the end of World War II.

Kikuchi was made a baron under the kazoku peerage system in 1902 and was the eighth president of the Gakushūin Peers' School. In 1917 he became the first president of RIKEN, but died that same year.

Family and issue

Kikuchi's children became well-known scientists, and his grandson Minobe Ryōkichi became governor of Tokyo.

References and further reading

^ Japanese Students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868–1912, pg 66, Noboru Koyama
^ "Kikuchi, Dairoku Yasuyuki (KKCY873DY)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.. Venn also lists him under the name 'Dairoku, Yasu-Yuki Kikuchi^{[permanent dead link]}'. In one case his birth date is given as 17 May 1855; in the other as 17 March 1855.
^ Baron Kikuchi (1909) Japanese Education via Internet Archive
^ Baron Kikuchi (1910) New Japan: Its Intellectual and Moral Development

Cobbing, Andrew. The Japanese Discovery of Victorian Britain. RoutledgeCurzon, London, 1998. ISBN 1-873410-81-6
Keane, Donald. Emperor Of Japan: Meiji And His World, 1852–1912. Columbia University Press (2005). ISBN 0-231-12341-8
'Kikuchi Dairoku, 1855–1917: Educational Administrator and Pioneer of Modern Mathematical Education in Japan,' by Noboru Koyama, Chapter 7, Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume 5, Global Oriental 2005, ISBN 1-901903-48-6