Early US-Japan collaborations in algal biofuels research: Continuities and perspectives

Algal research for the development of large-scale production of biofuels in open ponds is often believed to have started in the US as part of the Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program in the early 1980s. Little attention, however, has been paid to earlier algal research collaborations between the US and other countries, particularly Japan. These collaborations include US algal research in the 1950s under the visionary leadership of scientist/politician Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) that strategically built upon Japanese efforts led by the microbiologist Hiroshi Tamiya (1903–1984). Unpublished reports and correspondence held in archives in the Smithsonian Museum and the Carnegie Institute of Washington became available to the author. They shed new light on these collaborations. This article uses these documents and more recent sources to review events associated with Bush inviting Tamiya to visit the US in 1952 to collaborate with American scientists at the Carnegie Institution and elsewhere even while Japan was still under US/Allied Occupation. These interactions continued during the 1950s. Articles, reports on experimental results and Tamiya's observations of algal research in the US, Europe and Asia found among the sources are still pertinent. Furthermore, Tamiya's successful mass outdoor culture of algae, particularly Chlorella, in a pilot plant in Japan in the 1950s that became commercially successful had productivities on a par with results reported in the US as recently as 2018. However, while lessons were learned from early collaborations between the US and Japan, many have been subsequently overlooked. There are lessons to be learned from these early US-Japan collaborations that draw attention to pioneering algal research and the need to maintain archives. They also reveal critical continuities and provide perspectives on current algal biofuels research.