John Goodenough, co-inventor of revolutionary, Nobel Prize-winning lithium batteries, dies at 100
John Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on developing lithium-ion batteries, transformed the technology into rechargeable energy for devices ranging from mobile phones, computers and computers pacemakers to electric cars, has died at the age of 100, the University of Texas announced Monday.
Goodenough passed away Sunday at an assisted living facility in Austin, the university announced. No cause of death has been given. Goodenough has been an instructor in Texas for nearly 40 years.
Goodenough was the oldest person to receive a Nobel Prize as he shared the prize with British-American scientist M. Stanley Whittingham and Japan’s Akira Yoshino.
“Live to 97 and you can do anything,” Goodenough said as he presented the Nobel Prize, adding that he was grateful he wasn’t forced to retire at 65.
And while his name may not impress most people, Goodenough’s research helped usher in a revolution in technology now taken for granted in the world of mobile phones. Nowadays. tablet and pretty much anything else with a charging port.
Lithium-ion batteries were the first truly portable and rechargeable batteries, and they took more than a decade to develop. Whittingham said in 2019 that he had no idea that his work decades ago would have such a profound impact on the world.
“We thought it would be cool and help with a few things, but never thought it would revolutionize,” says Goodenough. electronic device and everything else.”
Goodenough, Whittingham and Yoshino each had unique breakthroughs that laid the groundwork for the development of commercial rechargeable batteries, and all three shared the $900,000 Nobel Prize.
Whittingham’s work in the 1970s exploited the tendency of lithium – the lightest metal – to give away its electrons to create a battery capable of generating just over two volts.
By 1980, Goodenough had built on Whittingham’s research and doubled the battery’s capacity to 4 volts by using cobalt oxide at the cathode, one of the two electrodes that make up the battery’s ends.
That type of battery is still too explosive for general commercial use. Yoshino’s work in the 1980s removed volatile pure lithium from batteries and chose safer lithium ions instead. The first light, safe, durable, and rechargeable commercial batteries hit the market in 1991.
Born in Jena, Germany in 1922, Goodenough grew up in USA and get a doctorate. in chemistry from the University of Chicago. He began his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research laid the groundwork for the development of digital random-access memory. computer.
Goodenough was head of the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford in the UK when he discovered lithium-ion. He joined the Texas faculty in 1986, and was still teaching and researching battery materials and solids science and engineering issues when he won the Nobel Prize.
Goodenough and his wife Irene were married for 70 years until her death in 2016.
