Co-inventor of lithium-ion batteries John Bannister Goodenough passes away

Texas, United States- John Bannister Goodenough, co-inventor of lithium-ion batteries and co-winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has passed away He was the oldest recipient of a Nobel Prize. Stan Whittingham, a British-American scientist who shared the Nobel Prize with Goodenough, was the first to discover that lithium may be held within sheets of titanium sulphide.

Dr. Goodenough died yesterday, according to the University of Texas, where he was a professor of engineering.

Goodenough began his career in 1952 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, where he spent 24 years developing random-access memory (RAM) for digital computers. Goodenough went on to become a professor and head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford after graduating from MIT. During this time, he discovered lithium-ion batteries.

According to the University of Texas, Goodenough arrived in Austin in 1986 with the goal of developing the next battery breakthrough and educating the next generation of battery innovators. Sony Corporation commercialised the lithium-ion battery in 1991, with Goodenough providing the foundation for a prototype. In 1996, his research group discovered a safer and more environmentally friendly cathode material, and in 2020, a Canadian hydroelectric power firm purchased the patents for this latest battery.