Tasumi earned his B.Sc. (1959), M.Sc. (1961) and Ph.D. (1964) from the University of Tokyo
in the laboratories of San-Ichiro Mizushima and of
Takehiko Shimanouchi, where he reported the first phonon dispersion
of polyethylene.[4] He spent the subsequent 33 years (1964–97) as a faculty member initially in
the Department of Biochemistry and then in the Department of Chemistry of the University of Tokyo. During this period,
he spent a year (1965–66) at University of Michigan
as a Fulbright scholar in the laboratory of Samuel Krimm and another year (1966–67)
at Polytechnic University of Milan as a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Giuseppe Zerbi under Giulio Natta, a Nobel laureate.[5]
At the University of Tokyo, Tasumi led a large group of spectroscopists, developing new
experimental and computational techniques of
infrared spectroscopy and Raman scattering spectroscopy.[1] He is known
for establishing the theoretical basis for interpreting the spectra of synthetic
polymers (including electrical conductive polymers),
proteins, and photosynthetic systems to elucidate their relationship with the structural,
thermal, mechanical, transport, and response properties. He published several papers[6] with Hideki Shirakawa, who was awarded a Nobel Prize jointly with Alan MacDiarmid and Alan Heeger.
He was among the earliest spectroscopists
who saw the great utility of ab initio electronic structure calculations in
understanding vibrational spectra. In particular, he established a steady-state spectroscopic method
that can determine the structures and dynamics of electronic excited states by resonance Raman excitation
profile, and applied it to polyenes including carotenoids. At the same time, he made important contributions
to the development and applications of time-resolved vibrational spectroscopies.
He is a co-author of the Protein Data Bank[7] and the editor/author of "Introduction to Experimental Infrared Spectroscopy: Fundamentals and Practical Methods."[8]
^Atkinson GH, Furukawa Y, Okamoto, H (2002). "Biography of Mitsuo Tasumi - Questions by the Guest Editors and Answers by Mitsuo Tasumi". Journal of Physical Chemistry A. 106 (14): 3255–3257. Bibcode:2002JPCA..106.3255.. doi:10.1021/jp0202035.
^Harada I, Furukawa Y, Tasumi M, Shirakawa H, Ikeda S (1980). "Spectroscopic studies on doped polyacetylene and β-carotene". Journal of Chemical Physics. 73 (10): 4746–4757. Bibcode:1980JChPh..73.4746H. doi:10.1063/1.440007.
^Bernstein FC, Koetzle TF, Williams G, Meyer EF, Brice MD, Rodgers JR, Kennard O, Shimanouchi T, Tasumi M (1977). "The protein data bank: A computer-based archival file for macromolecular structures". Journal of Molecular Biology. 112 (3): 535–542. doi:10.1016/S0022-2836(77)80200-3. PMID875032.