is a Japanese-born, American-based scientist. He has made numerous key contributions to the study of mammalian fertilization. He is a pioneer of assisted fertilization technologies such as in vitro fertilization and direct sperm injection into the egg (commonly called intracytoplasmic sperm injection or ICSI), which are widely used today in human infertility clinics throughout the world. He was also a pioneer in the cloning field. In 1997, his laboratory at the University of Hawaii at Manoa successfully cloned mice using the Honolulu technique. Early and later years Yanagimachi was born in Ebetsu and raised in Sapporo, Japan. He received a BS in zoology in 1952 and a DSc in animal embryology in 1960 both from Hokkaido University. Being unable to find a research position initially, he then worked as a high school teacher for two years. Yanagimachi applied for a post-doctoral position with Dr. M. C. Chang of the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. He got this position and there discovered how to fertilize hamster eggs "in vitro." This work led to in vitro fertilization of eggs of human and other mammalian species. In 1964, he returned to Hokkaido University as a temporary lecturer, with the possibility of later being appointed to an assistant professorship. However, another person eventually got the position. In 1966 Yanagimachi ended up at the University of Hawaii as an assistant professor and has become a full professor of the department of anatomy and reproductive biology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine. After working for 38 years at the University of Hawaii, he retired in the end of 2005 to become a professor emeritus, but keeps working with junior fellows. He is married to Hiroko, a former child psychologist. She could not find work in her field when they came to the U.S. due to a language barrier, so she went to work with researchers in his lab as an electron microscopist. Cloning In July 1998, Yanagimachi's team published work in Nature on cloning mice from adult cells. Yanagimachi named the new cloning technique they had created to do this work the "Honolulu technique". The first mouse born was named Cumulina, after the cumulus cells whose nuclei were used to clone her. At the time of the publication of this work, over fifty mice spanning three generations had been produced through this technique. This was accomplished by an international team of