Jokichi Takamine. Courtesy Bayer Corporation (permission pending). Jokichi Takamine (1854–1922) Washington, D.C., is known for the beauty of its cherry trees, which blossom white and pink every spring. Cherry trees first decorated the monumental grounds of the city in 1911, when the original trees were given to the city as a gift from the mayor of Tokyo as a gesture of international good will. This gift came about in part through the efforts of Jokichi Takamine, a Japanese-born biochemist who had come to live and work in the United States. Takamine began his scientific career working for the Japanese government. His specialty was the fermentation process used to produce sake from rice. In this research he discovered the active fermentation enzyme in rice mold, which he named Taka-Diastase. He eventually founded his own company in the United States to produce the enzyme. But Takamine is best known for his isolation of the hormone adrenaline in 1901, the first ever isolation of a hormone. In addition to his scientific and entrepreneurial enterprises, he worked hard to establish agrochemical, pharmaceutical, and plastics industries in his home country. Takamine was educated in both Japan and Scotland, and was married to an American woman. Oddly, he had learned to speak English as a child from a Dutch family living in Nagasaki, and always spoke English with a Dutch accent.