Thomas Noguchi

Thomas Noguchi is a Japanese-American coroner who spent much of his career as Los Angeles County's chief medical examiner and earned the nickname coroner to the stars. Born in Fukuoka Prefecture and raised in Yokosuka, he studied medicine at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, graduating in 1951, then immigrated to the United States and completed further internships and residencies in California. He joined the Los Angeles County coroner's office in 1961 and drew public attention with the autopsy of Marilyn Monroe. Appointed chief medical examiner in 1967, he supervised autopsies on figures such as John Belushi, Janis Joplin, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, and Natalie Wood. Demoted in 1982, he later held pathology posts at the University of Southern California and LAC+USC Medical Center, taught at USC and UCLA, and in 1999 received Japan's Order of the Sacred Treasure; he retired that year. He was president of the World Association for Medical Law from 2010 to 2022.