In 1985, he was invited to visit South Africa, then under apartheid. John was defined by his principles and was a true humanitarian with a deep sense of justice. His main focus, however, remained battery research, and in 1997 he discovered another key family of cathode materials, based on lithium metal phosphates. He witnessed the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, which he had predicted in the early 1970s, and provided chemical insights into the unusual behaviour of materials that displayed it. Oxford required John to retire at 65, so, a year early, in 1986, he made his final academic move, to the University of Texas at Austin. Shortly afterwards, he was instrumental in recognizing the utility of lithium manganese spinel as a cathode material.Ĭould grinding up lithium batteries help to recycle them? Realizing that oxides were the better option, Goodenough’s small group launched a tour de force in electrochemical techniques for battery fabrication, and achieved the first demonstration of an effective rechargeable lithium battery based on lithium cobalt oxide. There, his focus turned to lithium batteries, building on earlier work on sulfide-based materials by Whittingham at oil company Exxon. In 1976, he was appointed head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford, UK. His focus was on developing technologies that could be used in lower-income countries. In the 1970s, Goodenough turned his attention to renewable energy amid his concerns about the volatility of the international oil trade. 5, 145−399 1971) is an encyclopedic account of the behaviour of electrons in the transition-metal oxides that underpin a host of technologies, from digital computers and microelectronics to photovoltaics, lasers, solid-state lighting, superconducting devices and batteries. His first book, Magnetism and the Chemical Bond (1963), defined the state of the art. There, he changed what had been a systematic, empirical approach to the chemistry behind magnetic interactions into a rational, rule-based understanding, which was later codified as the Goodenough–Kanamori rules. After briefly considering ordination, John moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to work on materials for computer memories. Their shared Christian faith defined their life choices together. Chicago was also where he met his wife, Irene. Under the tutelage of Clarence Zener, Goodenough excelled in solid-state physics. How to make lithium extraction cleaner, faster and cheaper - in six steps Don’t you know that anyone who has ever done anything significant in physics had already done it by the time he was your age?” He clearly was an exception. In his 2008 autobiography Witness to Grace, John recalls the professor who registered him saying: “I don’t understand you veterans. After serving as a meteorologist for the US Army during the Second World War, at 24 years old he enrolled to study for a physics PhD at the University of Chicago in Illinois. This intellectual breadth influenced the importance that he later attached to interdisciplinary research. Despite early struggles with dyslexia, he entered Yale in 1940 to read philosophy, Greek, mathematics and chemistry. Goodenough grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, near Yale University. At the age of 97, John shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for their work on lithium batteries. In the 1970s, he predicted the existence of high-temperature superconductivity, the flow of electricity without resistance in conditions above 77 kelvin. In the 1950s and 1960s, Goodenough was a leader in the development of the first solid-state random access memory (RAM) devices for computers. Lithium batteries are just one of the technologies that he pioneered, through his insights into metallic oxides and magnetic interactions in solids. John Goodenough is best known for his 1980 invention of the rechargeable lithium battery, which is used in myriad devices, from electric cars to mobile phones, and holds the key to decarbonizing the world’s energy system. Credit: University of Texas at Austin via Sipa US/Alamy
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