Oskar Kellner

Oskar Kellner (1851 to 1911) was a German agricultural scientist, an agricultural chemist and animal physiologist. The Meiji government of Japan invited him to teach as a foreign advisor in order to improve Japanese agricultural productivity. Arriving on 5 November 1881, he taught at the Komaba Agricultural School in Tokyo and at its successor, the Tokyo Agriculture and Forestry School, now a department of the University of Tokyo, and he also researched chemical fertilizers. He is considered the father of Japanese agricultural chemistry. His nutritional analysis of livestock feed, called the Kellner Standard, was adopted by the Japanese livestock industry. He returned to Germany on 31 December 1892, and the Kellner rice fields at Komabano Park, close to the Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo, are a lasting tribute to his research in Japan.