Koichiro Matsuno

Koichiro Matsuno (born 14 March 1940) is a Japanese biophysicist. He is Professor Emeritus for biophysics at Nagaoka University of Technology in Japan.
Education
Koichiro Matsuno studied statistical physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and obtained PhD in physics in 1971. In 1985 he got a professorship at the Department of BioEngineering at Nagaoka University of Technology, Japan.
Contributions
After studying critical phenomena in second order phase transition at the graduate school of MIT, the main research interest of Koichiro Matsuno has shifted towards the origins of life and evolution of biological organization. The initial phase in this direction started in the collaboration with Sidney W. Fox of the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Evolution at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida, and then with Michael Conrad at Wayne State University at Detroit, Michigan. During the course of these collaborations, he came up with the new notion called internal measurement as a thread connecting between the origins and evolution of living matter. Koichiro Matsuno is currently editor of BioSystems. He has published research on cell motility, evolution of matter, measurement as a quantum phenomenon, origins of life, and temporality.
In 1989 Matsuno published the book Protobiology: Physical Basis of Biology where he explored how the study of biology can emerge from the study of physics, asking how an observable, measurable, biological object comes into being. This book was reviewed in BioSystems. The ideas of Matsuno on quantum biology and nature of consciousness were discussed in EMBO Reports in 2006: "QM has always been inextricably linked to consciousness, given the vital role of the observer in making measurements and defining events, and consciousness itself can be explained with reference to QM according to a number of researchers. 'It seems that consciousness operates very well in the classical realm,' said Koichiro Matsuno, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Nagaoka University of Technology in Japan, and a leader in the QM field. 'But one serious question would arise at this point. That is, how could one guarantee the robustness of such seemingly classical phenomena including our brain activities'".

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