Sumire Negishi
ROCKFORD, Ill. (AP) — Authorities in northern Illinois are investigating the death of the wife of a Nobel Prize winning chemistry professor whose body was found at a landfill hours after the couple were reported missing in Indiana.
The Ogle County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that deputies found 80-year-old Sumire Negishi’s body and the couple’s car on March 13 at Orchard Hills Landfill outside Rockford shortly after they found 82-year-old Ei-ichi Negishi walking nearby.
The sheriff’s department says foul play is not suspected, but wouldn’t discuss autopsy results.
The couple were reported missing on March 12 from their home, about 200 miles away in West Lafayette, Indiana, where Ei-ichi is a Purdue University chemistry professor. The Japanese scientist won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010.