June 30, 2023: We’re saddened to report that John Goodenough, the daddy of the lithium ion cell, and one of many three giants who created at present’s lithium battery trade, died on Sunday a month shy of his 101 birthday.
John, who has been interviewed a number of instances for Worldwide Batterywas awarded the joint Nobel Prize for Chemistry in October 2019 with two different lithium battery pioneers, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino.
In our subsequent interviews with Whittingham and Yoshino every acknowledged the world’s nice debt to Goodenough who found the cathode materials of alternative and thus made the lithium ion battery really moveable and rechargeable.
“John was an unassuming, modest and mild man whose work touched the lives of everybody throughout the planet,” stated Bob Galyen, CATL’s former CTO and buddy. Worldwide Battery. “It was a life nicely lived and John had a genius of astonishing proportions and his scientific contributions prolonged far past the lithium cell.”
Surprisingly for an individual whose analysis ends within the residence or pocket of a lot of the planet, he’s thought of a backward baby. It was later found that he was dyslexic and he later described how he handled this downside by learning summary mathematical thought and Greek and Latin.
On the age of 18 he left college on the high of his class and obtained a scholarship to Yale. He graduated whereas working as a meteorologist within the US Air Drive. A disaster of religion at the moment led him to a lifetime of service starting with the examine of physics on the College of Chicago or Northwestern College.
“Once I arrived in Chicago the registration officer, professor Simpson, stated to me, “I do not perceive you veterans. Do not you already know that anybody who has accomplished something attention-grabbing in physics has accomplished it when he was your age; and also you need to begin?”
Undeterred, he earned a grasp’s diploma in 1951 and a doctorate a 12 months later.
Over the subsequent six a long time his exceptional tutorial and analysis profession took him from his early work at MIT in laptop reminiscence to the College of Oxford in his 50s the place a lot of his ground-breaking work in lithium cells pioneered and for the final three a long time of his life on the College of Texas, the place he held the Virginia H Cockrell centennial chair in engineering.
He was nonetheless working till his late 90s and within the final years of his life pioneered a strong state battery. In 2017 he introduced patents for brand new battery cells utilizing a strong glass electrolyte as an alternative of a liquid one, utilizing an alkali steel anode. The glass electrolyte permits the substitution of low cost sodium for lithium. It has the potential to be the world’s second recreation changer within the power storage trade.
Caring little for cash, John signed away most of his rights. He shares patents with colleagues and donates stipends that accompany his analysis awards and scholarships.
He was married to Irene Wiseman for 65 years. He died in 2016. Later in his life he would work on the college within the mornings and go to his nursing residence, he was affected by dementia, within the afternoons.
Along with being a Nobel laureate, John is a worldwide member of the US Nationwide Academy of Engineering, a member of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences, the French Academy of Sciences, the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, and the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.
He has written greater than 800 articles for scientific journals, 85 chapters and eight books. He’s a fellow recipient of the 2009 Enrico Fermi Award and was elected a Overseas Member of the Royal Society and offered on the Nationwide Medal of Science by US president Barack Obama
Amongst his many publications is a really private one: “Witness to Grace”, wherein he describes how his mental journey additionally consists of “a spiritual seek for the that means of what or who I select to be.” service of my life.” Born into an agnostic household in the course of the conflict years he developed religion and was a religious Christian till the tip of his life.
A fuller evaluation of his life and analysis might be discovered within the subsequent difficulty of Worldwide Battery.
