Three win Chemistry Nobel Prize
THREE researchers were yesterday awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on development of lithium-ion batteries used in multiple devices such as laptops and mobile phones, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
“Through their work, this year’s chemistry laureates have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society,” the academy said.
Lithium-ion batteries are lightweight, rechargeable and powerful, and can also be used to store energy from, for instance, renewable sources like wind or solar power.
US-based researchers John B Goodenough and M Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino of Japan shared the prize, worth 9 million kronor (R14m).
Yoshino – an honorary fellow at Asahi Kasei Corporation in Tokyo, and professor at Meijo University in Nagoya – said climate change was a “very serious issue for humankind”.
In a phone call with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences after the prize was announced, Yoshino said lithium-ion batteries were important because of their contribution to a “sustainable society”.
Goodenough, born in 1922 in Jena, Germany, became “the oldest Nobel laureate ever awarded” a Nobel Prize in any category since 1901, the academy said. He turned 97 in July, making him “a few months older” than last year’s physics prize laureate Arthur Ashkin.
Goodenough is affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin in the US, while British-born Whittingham is professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York in the US.
Hansson said the academy had not reached Goodenough before the announcement, and did not know if he would come for the December10 award ceremony in Stockholm.
Nobel prizes this year have already been awarded in the fields of medicine and physics.
The Nobel Prize for Literature announcement is due today, while the peace announcement is due tomorrow; the economics award is expected next week.
With the exception of economics, the prizes were endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel (1833-96), the inventor of dynamite.