Documented path
Born in Osaka, Japan, Yamanaka earned his MD from Kobe University in 1987 at age 25, then pursued a PhD in pharmacology.
Born in Osaka, Japan; father ran a small factory.
Professor and Director at Kyoto University's CiRA; Nobel laureate (2012).
Where the conditions came from
Each is placed on a −1 to 3 scale from documented evidence, and the three are never added together. A combined total would rank Shinya Yamanaka against other people. Held apart, they explain why this path ran differently from another one—which is the only comparison this project supports.
The marble itself
+1Tailwind
What capability, drive, or early skill is documented in the person rather than their surroundings?
Good at mathematics and physics in school. Practiced judo seriously, suffered multiple fractures. MD at Kobe University at 25. Solid academic ability but no prodigy indicators. Career path shifted from surgery to research.
Where it was dropped
+1Tailwind
What money, family standing, network, or permission was already in place before the work began?
Father ran a small factory manufacturing sawing machine components in Higashi-Osaka. Engineer who designed and made products himself. Mother helped run business. Middle-class family with engineering/entrepreneurial background.
The shape of the track
0Neither way
What place, timing, institution, or peer group made the next step available?
Tennoji Junior High/High School (good school attached to Osaka Kyoiku University). Kobe University MD, Osaka City University PhD. Not elite institutions. Gladstone Institutes postdoc at UCSF was important but came later.
A −1 is a documented headwind, not a missing value; a 0 means the sources record nothing notable either way. Annotation confidence: High. These are analyst readings of what the sources record, not measurements of merit, talent, or effort. The twenty-two scored dimensions remain available inside the deeper research detail.
What moved through the conditions
This records repeated behaviour or recovery described by sources; it is not a grit or merit score.
A successful-only archive cannot recover all encounters, avoided setbacks, or alternative outcomes.
Strongest documented signals: Elite institution pipeline, Frontier geography, Dedicated mentor / coach.
Describes the starting position, not what the person later made of it.
Strongest observed levers: Domain proximity, Scarce skill depth, Structural wave / timing.
Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
The timeline below shows the sequence of work and transitions around the selected early milestone. It is evidence of a path, not proof that every step was necessary.
Legendary or globally iconic career standing. The tier summarizes documented career recognition through the data cutoff—not Shinya Yamanaka's worth or future potential.
Question four · where did the leverage come from?
Each non-zero lever gets a best-supported origin, evidence signals, and confidence. Unresolved is the honest default when the biography cannot distinguish self-built, advantage-enabled, earned, external, or mixed.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
A structural wave is external to the person, even when their position improved access to it.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
One or more documented starting advantages plausibly enabled this lever.
This is a bounded inference from the current annotations—not a claim about private effort, merit, or the percentage of Shinya Yamanaka's outcome attributable to any origin.
Structural luck, Encounter luck, Event luck, Outcome variance can change every arrow in the path. This successful-only dataset cannot observe the near-identical paths that did not break through, so luck stays visible and unscored.
Multiplying capacity documented later in the path. Measures what was present, not whether it was inherited, earned, self-built, external, or mixed.
Access or conditions documented near the beginning of the path. Zero means "no clear evidence in reviewed sources," not "advantage was absent."
Born in Osaka, Japan; father ran a small factory.
Not documented in reviewed sources.
Yamanaka completed his MD at Kobe University at age 25 in 1987, then earned a PhD in pharmacology. His discovery of iPSCs in 2006 revolutionized biology.
advantage confidence: Low · source count: 2 · audit: source_verified · status: subagent_researched_beta