Shiro Tashiro

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Shiro Tashiro, also known as Tashiro Shirosuke (February 12, 1883 – June 12, 1963), was a Japanese-born American biochemist and a professor at the University of Cincinnati. He developed a method to measure very small amounts of carbon dioxide produced by metabolism using barium hydroxide, known as Tashiro’s indicator. Born in Kagoshima, Japan, he moved to the United States in 1901 and earned a B.S. in 1909 and a Ph.D. in 1912 from the University of Chicago. He became an associate in physiological chemistry and an assistant professor in 1918, then moved to Cincinnati in 1919. In 1923 he earned a medical degree from Kyoto University for work on nerve-fiber metabolism, a tool used in animal physiology. He also worked on detecting ammonia and explored tests for acetylcholine. He became a full professor in 1925 and retired in 1952. He won the Osaka Mainichi Prize in 1924. He married Shizuka Kawasaki in 1915. His relative Sabro Tashiro later joined Cincinnati as a professor of surgery.