John B. Goodenough

**John Bannister Goodenough** (July 25, 1922 – June 25, 2023) was an American professor and solid-state physicist. He was a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at University of Texas at Austin. He is known for his creation of the lithium-ion battery, which is used on cellphones such as iphones.

## Career

In 2014, he won the Charles Stark Draper Prize for his works on the lithium-ion battery. In 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino. At age 97, he is the oldest person to win a Nobel prize. His other works also focus on the field of magnetism.

He was a Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. During his time there, he has worked on research on ionic conducting solids and electrochemical devices. He wanted to study fixing materials for batteries to help create electric vehicles and help end the use of fossil fuels. Goodenough discovered the polyanion class of cathodes. They showed that positive electrodes having polyanions, sulfates, create higher voltages than oxides because of the inductive effect of the polyanion.

In 2011, Goodenough was honored with the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama.

## Personal life

Goodenough was born in Jena, Germany, to American parents. During and after graduating from Yale University, Goodenough was a U.S. military meteorologist in World War II. He got a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. He became a researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and later the head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford. He was married to Irene Wiseman from 1954 until her death in 2016.

Goodenough turned 100 in July 2022.

Goodenough died on June 25, 2023 in Austin, Texas at the age of 100.

## Other websites

- Faculty Directory at University of Texas at Austin
- Array of Contemporary American Physicists
- History of the lithium-ion battery, Physics Today, Sept. 2016
- by The Electrochemical Society, October 5, 2016
- Are Solid State Batteries about to change the world?, Joe Scott, November 2018, Goodenough and team research on more energy dense solid state Li-ion chemistry featured 3:35–12:45.
- Pr John Goodenough's interview GOODENOUGH John B., 2001-05 - Sciences : histoire orale on École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris history of science website

## Infobox (scientist)

- **name**: John B. Goodenough
- **image**: Nobel 9 Dec 2019 029 copy (49204051647) (cropped).jpg
- **caption**: Goodenough in 2019
- **birth name**: John Bannister Goodenough
- **birth place**: Jena, Weimar Republic, Germany
- **death place**: Austin, Texas, United States, U.S.
- **education**: Yale University
University of Chicago
- **known for**: Li-ion battery, Li-ion rechargeable battery, Superexchange, Goodenough–Kanamori rules
- **awards**: Japan Prize
Enrico Fermi Award
National Medal of Science
IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies
Charles Stark Draper Prize
Welch Award
Copley Medal
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- **field**: Physics
- **workplaces**: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Oxford
University of Texas at Austin
- **doctoral advisor**: Clarence Zener
- **notable students**: Bill David (postdoc)