Nobel laureate found wandering disoriented near Rockford. Wife’s body discovered in car.

Before dawn on Tuesday, deputies from the Ogle County sheriff’s office south of Rockford responded to a report of a man wandering on a rural stretch of a nearby state road. The 82-year-old man law enforcement found on foot was dehydrated and confused.

As he was transported to a hospital for treatment, authorities did not realize that he was half of an Indiana couple reported missing the night before.

They also did not know that he was one of the brightest chemistry minds on the planet.

In 2010, Ei-ichi Negishi, a professor of organic chemistry at Purdue University, was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, the top honor for a lifetime of scientific work. The prize was awarded to Negishi for his research on “palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis” — a process known as “Negishi coupling.”

As the Lafayette Journal & Courier reported, after his Nobel award, he frequently said the honor half belonged to Sumire, his wife of 50 years.

In Ogle County, deputies soon realized that Ei-ichi and Sumire Negishi had been reported missing by their family members to the Indiana State Police. Eventually, police found the couple’s car in a ditch at a landfill eight miles from the Rockford International Airport. Sumire was found dead in the car. Police do not believe the death was the result of foul play, the Rockford Register Star reported.

This week, the Negishi family released a statement to WTHR. “We are devastated by the loss of our beloved wife and mother, Sumire Negishi, who was near the end of her battle with Parkinson’s,” the statement said. “The car was stuck in a ditch and determined to be nonfunctioning and [Ei-ichi Negishi] appeared to be searching for help.”

According to the family, when Ogle County deputies first encountered Ei-ichi Negishi, he said he was trying to get to the airport. He is still being treated at a hospital.

The Negishis first arrived at Purdue in 1966 when the young researcher came to study under future-Nobel Prize winner Hubert C. Brown, the Journal & Courier has reported. After leaving for a few years in the 1970s, the family returned in 1979 and has been in West Lafayette ever since. In 2011, the school partly named an institute after Ei-ichi Negishi.

Sumire Negishi was also an important figure in the area. When a Japanese auto plant opened in the region in 1988, she worked with the families of Japanese employees who had relocated to the states through the adjustment.

“Sumire Negishi was instrumental in helping to build the strong ties between Indiana and Japan through her extensive work both in assisting Japanese who relocated to our community and in helping to introduce the Japanese culture to Indiana residents,” a company executive told the paper this week.

On Wednesday, Mitch Daniels, the president of Purdue University, released a statement expressing condolences on behalf of the campus.

“Purdue University and the world have lost a dear friend in the death of Sumire Negishi,” he wrote, according to the Register Star. “Throughout a lifetime of love and loyalty, she supported her husband in a career of tremendous contributions to science and to the teaching and training of subsequent generations of top scientists.”