John Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work creating the lithium-ion battery that remodeled expertise with rechargeable energy for gadgets starting from cellphones, computer systems, and pacemakers to electrical automobiles, has died at 100, the College of Texas introduced Monday.
Goodenough died Sunday at an assisted residing facility in Austin, the college introduced. No explanation for demise was given. Goodenough was a college member at Texas for almost 40 years.
Goodenough was the oldest particular person to obtain a Nobel Prize when he shared the award with British-born American scientist M. Stanley Whittingham and Japan’s Akira Yoshino.
“Stay to 97 and you are able to do something,” Goodenough mentioned when the Nobel was awarded, including he was grateful he wasn’t pressured to retire at 65.
And whereas his title might not ring a bell to most, Goodenough’s analysis helped unlock a revolution in expertise now taken with no consideration in at this time’s world of moveable telephones, tablets and absolutely anything else with a plug-in port for a recharge.
Lithium-ion batteries have been the primary really moveable and rechargeable batteries, they usually took greater than a decade to develop. Whittingham mentioned in 2019 that he had no inkling that his work a long time in the past would have such a profound influence on the world.
“We thought it might be good and assist in a number of issues,” Goodenough mentioned, “however by no means dreamed it might revolutionize electronics and every part else.”
Goodenough, Whittingham and Yoshino every had distinctive breakthroughs that laid the muse for creating a industrial rechargeable battery and the three shared the $900,000 Nobel Prize.
Whittingham’s work within the Nineteen Seventies harnessed the tendency of lithium — the lightest steel — to present away its electrons to make a battery able to producing simply over two volts.
By 1980, Goodenough had constructed on Whittingham’s work and doubled the battery’s capability to 4 volts through the use of cobalt oxide within the cathode, one of many two electrodes that make up the ends of a battery.
That battery remained too explosive for normal industrial use. Yoshino’s work within the Eighties eradicated the risky pure lithium from the battery and as a substitute opted for lithium ions which might be safer. The primary light-weight, secure, sturdy and rechargeable industrial batteries entered the market in 1991.
Born in Jena, Germany in 1922, Goodenough grew up in the US and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the College of Chicago. He started his profession on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise, the place his analysis laid the groundwork for growth of random-access reminiscence for the digital pc.
Goodenough was head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory on the College of Oxford in England when he made his lithium-ion discovery. He joined the Texas school in 1986, and was nonetheless instructing and researching battery supplies and solid-state science and engineering issues when he gained the Nobel Prize.
Goodenough and his spouse Irene have been married 70 years till her demise in 2016.
