Japanese scientist Shirakawa, co-winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, dies at 90

Japanese Nobel Prize winner, chemist Hideki Shirakawa, speaks with Swedish Embassy Minister Karl Leifland at his home in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, on Oct. 11, 2000. (AP Photo/Tsugufumi Matsumoto, File) 2026-09-03T11:49:44Z Tokyo (AP) — Japanese scientist Hideki Shirakawa, co-winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovering and developing conductive polymers, has died. He was 90. The discovery by Shirakawa and two fellow American scientists, Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid, demonstrated that plastic could conduct electricity like metal and be used in applications such as electronics. Shirakawa died on Aug. 24, according to the University of Tsukuba, where he taught and researched after joining in 1979. The university did not specify a cause of death. Japan’s largest newspaper, the Yomiuri, said Shirakawa died at a hospital in Yokohama, west of Tokyo. Born in Tokyo in 1936, Shirakawa earned a doctoral degree in engineering at the Tokyo-institute-of-technology" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="199431" data-entity-type="organization">Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966. Ten years later, he became a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with McDiarmid and Heeger. The three scientists’ findings that defied common sense that plastics are not conductive paved the way for the development of inexpensive conductive materials that are lighter and more flexible than metals and used in solar cells and mobile phone screens. 获取更多RSS： https://feedx.net https://feedx.site