John Goodenough, one of the pioneers of Li-Ion battery technology, died this morning in Texas at the age of 100. He is also the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 along with Staley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino because the efforts of the three of them are the reason why Li-Ion batteries are now an important component on various electronic devices and even electric cars.
In 1980 John Goodenough replaced the titanium disulfide cathode with cobalt oxide used in the li-ion cell invented by Staley Whittingham in the 1970s. With this cathode change the capacity of the li-ion battery is doubled.
He received his undergraduate education at Yale University, before pursuing a master's degree and then a PhD in physics at the University of Chicago. He then became an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While receiving the Nobel Prize in 2019, he became the oldest recipient at the age of 97.
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