History

The Undergraduate Department of Industrial Chemistry is one of the oldest departments at Kyoto University and was established in 1898, a year after the university was founded. In the following years, five more departments were created in response to the continuing growth of the nation's industries in both scale and quality. Those departments were Fuel Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Polymer Chemistry, Synthetic Chemistry and Molecular Engineering. These six chemistry-oriented departments cover all areas of chemistry ranging from fundamental theories to industrial application and on to actual production. They have also collaborated to create a unique academic atmosphere placing an importance on both basic research and industrial application. Alumni have played an active part in wide areas of academic research and industry and have contributed toward bringing Japan's science and technology to the level they are today. The two Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry, Dr. Kenichi Fukui and Dr. Ryoji Noyori, are among them. However, with the arrival of the 21st century, the demands on chemistry have diversified and increased. In order to respond to these changes, there is a need for diversified education and more advanced research that is not bound by the conventional structure for research and education. The departments related to chemistry were combined and restructured in 1993 to become a new Undergraduate Department of Industrial Chemistry. This new undergraduate department, still carrying the long held traditional former name, is in essence a new comprehensive department that places an importance on fundamental chemistry and engineering without being bound to narrow specialties. The graduate school was also reorganized into the six Departments of Material Chemistry, Energy and Hydrocarbon Chemistry, Molecular Engineering, Polymer Chemistry, Synthetic and Biological Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Though some departments carry the same name as its predecessor, the compositions are different. Each department has exclusive laboratories for graduate research in order to promote advanced and embryonic research. In addition, many former laboratories were conglomerated to become one large division in order to promote advanced research and interdisciplinary research. Furthermore, four research institutes within the university, the Institute for Chemical Research, Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Institute of Advanced Energy, and the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, participate in the cooperative research activities. The fields that the chemistry-oriented departments are included in cover almost all research areas related to chemistry.