Engineers
John Goodenough
Also Known As John Bannister Goodenough · John Goodenough
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
John Goodenough was an American materials scientist and solid-state physicist who spent twenty-four years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory researching magnetism before moving to Oxford University in the late 1970s, where in 1980 he identified the lithium cobalt oxide cathode that made a higher-voltage, commercially practical rechargeable lithium battery possible, building on M. Stanley Whittingham's earlier intercalation cell. From 1986 until his death he was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2019 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, becoming, at 97, its oldest laureate.
Facts
Learn More
From Whittingham's Unstable Cell to Goodenough's Fix
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
M. Stanley Whittingham built the first rechargeable lithium battery in 1974 while working at Exxon, pairing a titanium disulfide cathode with an anode of metallic lithium. It worked, in the sense that it could store and release charge by moving lithium ions back and forth, but metallic lithium anodes have a habit of growing needle-like structures called dendrites as a battery cycles, and a dendrite that bridges the two electrodes can short the cell and start a fire. Whittingham's battery was too dangerous to sell. John Goodenough spent the years that followed looking for a cathode that could hold more charge at a higher voltage without depending on a dangerous anode, and in 1980 he found it: lithium cobalt oxide, a material stable enough and energetic enough to become the foundation of nearly every lithium battery built since. Goodenough had solved half the problem. The other half, a safe way to hold the lithium on the other side of the cell, took five more years and a different researcher entirely.
Cross-Tradition Connections
In Field
Invented
Goodenough led the Oxford University group that identified lithium cobalt oxide as a usable battery electrode in 1980, working with Tokyo University's Koichi Mizushima.
In 1980 identified the lithium cobalt oxide cathode that enabled a higher-voltage, commercially practical rechargeable lithium battery, building on Whittingham's earlier cell; shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.