From Peter and Birgit Satir

Dear Tomomi Tani,

Birgit and I write here about our remembrances of Yutaka Naitoh. It is very nice of you to compile these for your memoir. Yutaka was a very important scientist not only for our field of ciliate biology, but, as has not been fully appreciated, as a true pioneer contributing to a full understanding of the cell membrane. As we began our own work with the ciliates, we knew his work on calcium channels in the Paramecium ciliary membrane, first with Dryl, our Polish colleague, and then with Roger Eckert. As I recall, we visited Roger and Yutaka at UCLA for a general discussion of calcium, cilia and Paramecium. sometime in the early 1970s. This was at a time when ion channels were still largely a mystery and few people thought about these problems. It was a very important meeting for us. Unfortunately, when I came to Todai to work with Kinosita in 1972, Naitoh had left for America.

We met Yutaka many times during the following years at Protozoology and Ciliate biology meetings, always with pleasant and interesting discussions. When he was working with Richard Allen he arranged a memorable International Congress of Protozoology in Hawaii. We enjoyed it immensely. Our friendship grew and was sustained over the ensuing years.

I think Yutaka was responsible for Toshikasu Hamasaki coming to work with me at Einstein. This was a fine collaboration for which I was very thankful .

We hope these brief recollections will give you some idea of how influential Yutaka's work and friendship was for us in the field. We shall miss him.

Peter and Birgit Satir

2020-05-27