Message from the Dean

Norikazu Ohtori
Norikazu Ohtori

Our main duty of education and research in the Faculty of Science is the quest for truth. The learning required to approach to the truth is to understand the knowledge which our predecessors have already reached and to learn methods to investigate unreached areas. It is not easy to follow the path pioneered by our predecessors, but since the curriculum of each field of the Faculty of Science is well-developed and devised so that, if students could study fully actively, they will reach to the cutting edge efficiently with a solid understanding.

Each curriculum at the Faculty of Science is highly systematized as lectures and practical training subjects in each field (discipline). The systematically acquired knowledge is the source of ideas (wisdom) for taking on new challenges. While science has evolved in each field, new challenges may have become more complex and require interdisciplinary wisdom. Challenges for the SDGs are such comprehensive examples.

"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." [*]

This is a description of ideal that Marie Curie had when she entered Sorbonne university (Faculty of Science). Under academic freedom, the quest for truth should basically be based on the pure interests and ideas of the individual, as long as the scholarly significance and value are recognized, but simultaneously we can’t help considering the relationship with our society. Such considerations must come from our general responsibility for all humanity rather than the demands of the times.

The Faculty of Science, Niigata University, focuses on natural environment science and field science, and collaborates with the Faculty of Agriculture, Marine Biological Station in Sado Island Cente for Ecological Sustainability, and Research Institute for Natural Hazards and Disaster Recovery to tackle today's complex issues in a cross-cutting and active manner. As a matter of course, we cannot hope to solve cross-cutting issues without inheriting and developing each discipline. Under a single Department of Science, the Faculty of Science consists of seven major programs (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Environment Science, and Field Research in the Environmental Sciences), and has the largest capacity of faculty members and students on the Sea of Japan side.

The majority of graduates go on to graduate schools, and after their final graduation from the Faculty or our Graduate School they work actively as engineers in science and engineering companies, science and mathematics teachers in high school and junior high school, and researchers and teachers in research institutes such as universities. Study in the Faculty of Science and its graduate school is the foundation of all science and has wide applicability. In addition, we will emphasize career education and learn how science expertise is utilized in society with abundant examples.

We would like to invite young people who are interested in science to find a course that suits them from the various choices in the Faculty of Science of Niigata University, and to learn with us with the aim of further improvement.

Norikazu Ohtori
Dean

[*] Naomi Pasachoff, Marie Curie: And the Science of Radioactivity Discovering the New Power of Nature, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996.