In 1969, the present author was employed as an assistant professor in the laboratory of Prof. Keiichiro Fuwa in the Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Faculty of Agriculture, the University of Tokyo. Prof. Fuwa had spent in the Medical School of Harvard University for 14 years, where he worked as the research staff with Prof. BL Vallee. Prof. Vallee was famous in the pioneer work of zinc physiology. In 1968, Prof. Fuwa came back to Japan, and he was responsible for the laboratory of

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... l Chemistry. There, he proposed to the laboratory members that "metals in biology" was the main research theme of his laboratory. "Metals in biology" was really new aspect to us, and gave great infl uences in our research life after that. Progress of analytical atomic spectrometry In 1974, Prof. Fuwa also held his position as the Division Head of Chemistry and Physics in the National Institute for Environmental Studies which was just newly established, and I moved to the same institute. As well known, those days our country had serious environmental pollution problems such as Minamata disease and Itai-Itai (Auch-Auch) disease caused by toxic metals such as mercury and cadmium. However, it was not so easy to analyze mercury, cadmium and other toxic metals sensitively and precisely, and we had to start to develop sensitive analytical instruments. Those days, atomic absorption