Prof. Ikeda was born in 1864 in Kyoto as the second son of the head of the Kyoto branch of the feudal Satsuma clan. He enrolled in the Department of Chemistry of Tokyo Imperial University in 1885 and studied chemistry under Prof. Joji Sakurai, who also happened to be his brother-in-law. He graduated in 1889 and became an associate professor at the university. From 1899, Prof. Ikeda studied in Germany for two years at the laboratory of Prof. Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald at the University of Leipzig, which was then the center of physical chemistry. Prof. Ostwald himself was a Nobel laureate in chemistry in 1909. After finishing his studies in Germany, Prof. Ikeda stayed for a while in London, where he lived in the same boarding house as the author Soseki Natsume. Soseki later wrote in a collection of his notes that Prof. Ikeda's philosophical insights had a great influence on his writing. After returning to Japan in 1901, Prof. Ikeda became a professor in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Tokyo Imperial University. He introduced the field of physical chemistry to Japan and established its foundation.