Which school did Akira Yoshino go to from 1972 to 2005?
Akira Yoshino Early life and education . Yoshino was born in Suita , Japan , on 30 January 1948 . He graduated from Kitano High School in Osaka City ( 1966 ) . He earned a B.S . ( 1970 ) and an M.S . ( 1972 ) in engineering from Kyoto University , and earned a doctorate in engineering from Osaka University in 2005 . During his college years , Yoshino had attended a course taught by Kenichi Fukui , the first Asian to become a Nobel Laureate in chemistry . Career . Yoshino spent his entire non-academic career at Asahi Kasei Corporation . Immediately after graduating with his masters degree in 1972 , Yoshino began working at Asahi Kasei . He began work in the Kawasaki Laboratory in 1982 and was promoted to manager of product development for ion batteries in 1992 . In 1994 , he became manager of technical development for the LIB manufacturer A&T Battery Corp. , a joint venture company of Asahi Kasei and Toshiba . Asahi Kasei made him a fellow in 2003 and , in 2005 , general manager of his own laboratory . Since 2017 , he has been a professor at Meijo University and his status at Asahi Kasei has changed to honorary fellow . Research . In 1981 Yoshino began research on rechargeable batteries using polyacetylene . Polyacetylene is the electroconductive polymer discovered by Hideki Shirakawa , who later ( in 2000 ) would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its discovery . In 1983 Yoshino fabricated a prototype rechargeable battery using lithium cobalt oxide ( LiCoO ) ( discovered in 1979 by Godshall et al . at Stanford University , and John Goodenough and Koichi Mizushima at Oxford University ) as cathode and polyacetylene as anode . This prototype , in which the anode material itself contains no lithium , and lithium ions migrate from the LiCoO cathode into the anode during charging , was the direct precursor to the modern lithium-ion battery ( LIB ) . Polyacetylene had low real density which meant high capacity required large battery volume , and also had problems with instability , so Yoshino switched to carbonaceous material as anode and in 1985 fabricated the first prototype of the LIB and received the basic patent . This was the birth of the current lithium-ion battery . The LIB in this configuration was commercialized by Sony in 1991 and by A&T Battery in 1992 . Yoshino described challenges and history of the invention process in a book chapter from 2014 . Yoshino discovered that carbonaceous material with a certain crystalline structure was suitable as anode material , and this is the anode material that was used in the first generation of commercial LIBs . Yoshino developed the aluminum foil current collector which formed a passivation layer to enable high cell voltage at low cost , and developed the functional separator membrane and the use of a positive temperature coefficient ( PTC ) device for additional safety . The LIBs coil-wound structure was conceived by Yoshino to provide large electrode surface area and enable high current discharge despite the low conductivity of the organic electrolyte . In 1986 Yoshino commissioned the manufacture of a batch of LIB prototypes . Based on safety test data from those prototypes , the United States Department of Transportation ( DOT ) issued a letter stating that the batteries were different from the metallic lithium battery . Recognition . - 1998 Chemical Technology Prize from the Chemical Society of Japan - 1999 : Battery Division Technology Award from The Electrochemical Society - 2001 : Ichimura Prizes in Industry—Meritorious Achievement Prize - 2003 : Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education , Culture , Sports , Science and Technology—Prize for Science and Technology , Development Category - 2004 : Medal with Purple Ribbon , from the Government of Japan - 2011 : Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize from the Foundation for Promotion of Material Science and Technology of Japan - 2011 : C&C Prize from the NEC C&C Foundation - 2012 : IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies from the IEEE - 2013 : Global Energy Prize - 2014 : Charles Stark Draper Prize - 2018 : Japan Prize - 2019 : European Inventor Award - 2019 : Nobel Prize in Chemistry - 2019 : Order of Culture External links . - The father of lithium-ion batteries ( Chemistry World , July 2018 ) - including the Nobel Lecture 8 December 2019 Brief History and Future of Lithium-ion Batteries