He’s the self-professed inventor of the floppy disk – and of a self-defense wig. He was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in 2005 at Harvard for taking a picture of every meal he’d eaten for the past 34 years – one meal per day. He strongly believes that with his Yummi Nutri Brain Food, humans can live for 144 years. He’s Japan’s most famous inventor, with over 3,300 patents. His name is Yoshiro Nakamatsu, and he’s coming to Boston this week, reports Marc Abrahams, organizer of the Ig Nobel Prizes.
Nakamatsu will be at the helm of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, taking place Thursday at Harvard’s Sanders Theater. The award, a parody of the Noble Prize, recognizes unusual or odd scientific inventions or research that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”
Eccentric and brilliant, he prefers to be called Dr. NakaMats, because eight letters are easier to remember than nine. In Japan, the 86-year-old is known for consistently running for office (and consistently losing), for hosting the World Genius Convention and for appearing on talk shows to comically present his inventions. His “creativity process” includes diving under water, where he uses an underwater pencil and notepad to record ideas stemming from a lack of oxygen.
He is most famous for inventing the floppy disk – a claim disputed by IBM, which asserts that IBM engineers created the floppy disk without help from Nakamatsu. Nakamatsu contests that he licensed his floppy disk patents to the company.
What’s more, he claims to have invented the CD, the digital watch and the taximeter, as well as less weighty devices. “Pyon Pyon” shoes, available on his website, have springs in their soles, allowing the wearer to jump higher and run faster.
In 2009, Danish filmmaker Kaspar Astrup Shröder filmed the documentary “The Invention of Dr. Nakamats” (below), capturing Nakamatsu’s personality and eccentricity. The whole film is available on Hulu.
Nakamatsu often cited his desire to live to the age of 144, writing a paper about how humans could do so. This is one of his dreams that may not become a reality: in June, he announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in December and isn’t expected to live past the end of 2015. The news prompted him to resolve to “discover a new treatment” and to create a robot that could be used to treat cancer.
This week’s event will be broadcast live, beginning at 6 p.m. He’ll also be giving a free public lecture on Saturday, Sept. 20 as part of the Ig Informal lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tune in or attend – these may be some of the last chances to see “Dr. NakaMats” speak in the United States.
See below for a preview of “The Invention of Dr. Nakamats.”
Screenshot via YouTube
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misspelled Ig Nobel. It’s been fixed.
