Contents
John B. Goodenough
Developing materials that made powerful rechargeable lithium-ion batteries possible.
Magnetic materials · Lithium cobalt oxide
- Born
- 25 July 1922
- Birthplace
- Jena, Germany
- Died
- 25 June 2023
More people
John B. Goodenough
John B. Goodenough was an American materials scientist who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work on battery electrodes helped make portable electronics and electric vehicles practical.
Early life
Mathematics at Yale
Studied mathematics before wartime service as a meteorologist.
Postwar physics
Earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1952.
Career
- 1952
MIT research
Joined Lincoln Laboratory and worked on magnetic materials.
- 1976
Oxford
Led the inorganic chemistry laboratory.
- 1980
Battery breakthrough
His team developed a lithium cobalt oxide cathode.
- 1986
Texas
Joined the University of Texas at Austin and continued materials research.
Contributions
Magnetic materials
Contributed to understanding magnetism used in early computer memory.
Lithium cobalt oxide
Identified a high-voltage rechargeable-battery cathode.
Lithium iron phosphate
Helped develop another important family of battery materials.
Beyond the lab
Family
Married historian Irene Wiseman in 1951.
Long life
Continued research into old age and celebrated his hundredth birthday in 2022.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Nobel biography ↗Photo: US Embassy Sweden. CC BY 2.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
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