Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor John Goodenough Passes Away At 100

John Goodenough, the world’s oldest Nobel laureate and a pioneer in lithium-ion battery development, died at the age of 100.

According to the University of Texas, Mr. Goodenough died Sunday in an assisted living home in Austin, where he worked as an engineering professor for 37 years. The cause of death was not disclosed.

He aged 97 when he shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Britain’s Stanley Whittingham and Japan’s Akira Yoshino, for their work on lithium-ion batteries.

Notably, lithium-ion batteries power millions of electric automobiles worldwide.

While conferring the prestigious award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced, “This rechargeable battery laid the foundation of wireless electronics such as mobile phones and laptops. It also makes a fossil fuel-free world possible, as it is used for everything from powering electric cars to storing energy from renewable sources”.

John Goodenough has also received the National Medal of Science, the Enrico Fermi Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal, among other honors.

He went on to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin since 1986.

Mr. Goodenough and his university colleagues have also been investigating novel avenues for energy storage in recent years, including a glass battery with solid-state electrolyte and lithium or sodium metal electrodes.

The Nobel laureate and his wife Irene had been married for 70 years till she died in 2016.

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