John Goodenough, Nobel laureate and battery pioneer, dies at 100

2023-06-27 08:37:11

The Nobel Prize John Goodenough, pioneer in the development of lithium-ion batteries that today power millions of electric vehicles around the world, passed away on Sunday just one month shy of his 101 birthday.

The American was “a leader at the forefront of scientific research throughout many decades of his career,” said Jay Hartzell, president of the University of Texas at Austin, where Goodenough was a professor for 37 years.

Goodenough was 97 years old when he received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Briton Stanley Whittingham and the Japanese Akira Yoshino, for their respective research on lithium-ion batteries, making him the oldest Nobel Prize winner.

“This rechargeable battery laid the foundation for wireless electronics such as cell phones and laptop computers,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the prize.

“It also makes a world free of fossil fuels possible, as it is used for everything from powering electric cars to storing energy from renewable sources.”

Investigated other options to store energy

In recent years, Goodenough and his college team had also been exploring new directions for energy storage, including a “glass” battery with solid-state electrolyte and lithium or sodium metal electrodes.

Goodenough was also one of the first developers of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathodes as an alternative to nickel and cobalt based cathodes. LFP is rapidly overtaking the more expensive nickel cobalt manganese in electric vehicle batteries, experts say, because it uses materials that are more abundant and sustainable at much lower cost.

He was born on July 25, 1922 in Jena, Germany to American parents.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the Uyale universityGoodenough received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. He became a researcher and team leader at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then directed the inorganic chemistry laboratory at the Oxford University.