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Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for development of lithium-ion batteries – live!
(32 minutes later)
Predictions are always tricky for chemistry, especially since in recent decades chemistry has expanded to encompass biochemistry, materials science and various other disciplines that don’t easily slot into medicine or physics prizes. Afterall everything is made from chemicals.
Yoshino says it was “amazing” to get the call. Man of few words. Apparently he sounded happy when he received the call though.
John B. Goodenough and others who helped develop lithium-ion batteries are seen as favourites. The CRISPR pioneers Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Feng Zhang are seen as likely future winners, although following the human gene editing scandal in China earlier in the year, this might not be seen as the best year to recognise their achievement. The question of who to recognise for Crispr would also be contentious, with various patent battles and disputes over who holds claim to discovery ongoing in the courts.
A reporter asks whether he carried out the research to help make more environmental technologies or to make money. “Curiosity” was the main driving force, says Yoshino.
Other contenders include Marvin Caruthers of the University of Colorado, Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology, and Michael Hunkapiller, CEO of DNA sequencing company Pacific Biosciences. They made significant contributions to the development of modern DNA sequencing techniques in the 1980s.
The line isn’t great, but I think he said “I started working on this in 1981. I invented lithium ion battery in 1985”. Goran Hansson, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, suggests this is a “long time”. Seems relatively quick to me, given it’s a Nobel-winning advance.
Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University, and Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford have been suggested for their development of optogenetics, which has helped reveal the inner workings of the brain and nervous system.
They’ve got Akira Yoshino, the Japanese laureate on the phone. I’ll update you with his reaction to winning the prize shortly.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has handed out 110 Nobel prizes in chemistry since 1901. They have gone to 181 individuals with Frederick Sanger being the only double chemistry laureate, winning in 1958 for his work on the structure of insulin and in 1980 for DNA sequencing. Frances Arnold, who was awarded the prize in 2018, is just one of five female chemistry laureates.
Echoing Jim Peebles’ comments yesterday, Goodenough said in a recent interview with The Times:
Here we go: day three of the 2019 Nobel prizes!
“At the time we developed the battery it was just something to do,” he says. “I didn’t know what electrical engineers would do with the battery. I really didn’t anticipate cellphones, camcorders and everything else.”
We’ve already had the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine on monday, when Sir Peter Ratcliffe at Oxford University, Gregg Semenza at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and William Kaelin at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston shared the award for discovering how cells sense and respond to an oxygen shortage.
This will be a popular win - one that people have been anticipating for years.
Physics was yesterday. One half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£740,000) prize went to the cosmologist, Jim Peebles, and the other half was shared between Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz. Between them, these scientists paved the way for our understanding of how the universe evolved, what’s in it (mostly dark matter and energy) and discovered the first planet beyond our solar system. Impressive.
The three laureates each played a critical role in the development of lithium ion batteries.
But today is all about the chemistry prize. If you’ve been responsible for a major chemical discovery in the past half century or so, and your phone is ringing right now, it’s probably worth picking up.
In the early 1970s, Stanley Whittingham used lithium’s enormous drive to release its outer electron when he developed the first functional lithium battery.
Everyone else, please join us for the live announcement, comment and analysis. We’ll find out the winner – or more likely the winners – no earlier than 10.45am.
John Goodenough doubled the lithium battery’s potential, creating the right conditions for a vastly more powerful and useful battery.
Akira Yoshino succeeded in eliminating pure lithium from the battery, instead basing it wholly on lithium ions, which are safer than pure lithium. This made the battery workable in practice.
Olof Ramstrom, of the chemistry prize committee is bringing the puns out. “This is a highly charged story of tremendous potential,” he says of the latest announcement.
Lithium ion batteries were the first truly lightweight batteries, that have paved the way for portable electronics, like mobile phones, pacemakers. Electric cars, as well.
Goodenough (97) is the new oldest person ever to get the Nobel prize. Last year Arthur Ashkin (at 96) was the oldest
The 2019 #NobelPrize in Chemistry has been awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.” pic.twitter.com/LUKTeFhUbg
