Eiji Osawa (大沢 英二 Ōsawa Eiji, born June 6, 1935 in Toyama, Japan),[1] a professor of computational chemistry, is famous for the prediction in 1970 of the C60 molecule.[2][3]
Osawa received his Master's of Engineering in chemistry from Kyoto University's Department of Industrial Chemistry and then became an engineer at Teijin Co., Ltd. In 1964, he returned to Kyoto University and earned a Doctorate of Engineering in chemistry under Professor Yoshida. After three years of postdoctoral work at the University of Wisconsin, Princeton University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in 1970 he became an assistant professor at Hokkaidu University. In 1990, Osawa became a full professor at Toyahashi University of Technology, where he retired in 2001. Upon his retirement, assisted by Futaba, Co., Ltd., headquartered in Chiba, Osawa started the research and development company NanoCarbon Research Institute, Ltd.