Toshio Yanagida (柳田 敏雄, Yanagida Toshio) (born 1946) is a Japanese biophysicist famous for his pioneer research in single molecule biology, and made important contributions to single molecule fluorescence microscopy.

[1] Yanagida has been leading the development of single molecule detection techniques to study molecular motors, enzyme reactions, protein dynamics, and cell signaling since he succeeded in the direct observation of motion of single F-actin filaments in the presence of myosin in 1984.

[2] His single molecule experiments designed to investigate how thermal fluctuations (noise) play a positive role in the unique operation of biological molecular machines allowing for flexible and adaptive biological systems including muscle and brain.

[3] Yanagida was born in Hyogo, Japan, and received his doctorate in Engineering Science in 1976 from Osaka University.

[3] For his outstanding contributions, Yanagida received numerous honors and awards including the 1998 Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy, the 1998 Asahi Prize,[4] and also the 2011 US Genomic Award for Outstanding Investigator in the Field of Single Molecule.