Satyu Yamaguti


Satyu Yamaguti was a Japanese parasitologist, entomologist, and helminthologist. He was a specialist of mosquitoes and helminths such as digeneans, monogeneans, cestodes, acanthocephalans and nematodes. He also worked on the parasitic crustaceans Copepoda and Branchiura. Satyu Yamaguti wrote more than 60 scientific papers and, more importantly, several huge monographs which are still in use by scientists all over the world and were cited over 1,000 times each.

Education and career

Satyu Yamaguti was born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, 21 April 1894.
He graduated from Okayama Medical College, studied pathology at Tokyo University and parasitology at the Institut für Tropenkrankheiten in Hamburg, Germany. He received his MD from Tokyo University in 1926 and was Dr. Sc. of Kyoto University in 1935.
He was lecturer in parasitology in Kyoto University, parasitologist at the Naval Institute of Tropical Hygiene in Macassar with the Japanese Navy, and special consultant of the Malaria Survey Detachment of the US Army. He became Professor of parasitology in Okayama University Medical School, was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii and a Graduate Professor of Biology at Tulane University.
He died on 11 March 1976 in Kyoto, Japan.

Awards and honours

Numerous taxa were named in the honour of Satyu Yamaguti. Most are parasites.
A few examples of genera are:
Many species were dedicated to Satyu Yamaguti and are generally named yamagutii, such as Acleotrema yamagutii, or, more rarely, satyui, such as Pseudorhabdosynochus satyui.

Zoological nomenclature

Satyu Yamaguti created what is probably the longest currently valid genus name of the zoological nomenclature, Lagenivaginopseudobenedenia Yamaguti, 1966. This is a monogenean of the family Capsalidae, parasite on the gills of deep-sea fish of the family Lutjanidae.

Obituaries