Obituary: John Bannister Goodenough, battery pioneer (1922–2023)
) is an encyclopedic account of the behaviour of electrons in the transition-metal oxides that underpin a host of technologies, from digital computers and microelectronics to photovoltaics, lasers, solid-state lighting, superconducting devices and batteries.
In the 1970s, Goodenough turned his attention to renewable energy amid his concerns about the volatility of the international oil trade. His focus was on developing technologies that could be used in lower-income countries. In 1976, he was appointed head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford, UK. There, his focus turned to lithium batteries, building on earlier work on sulfide-based materials by Whittingham at oil company Exxon.
John was defined by his principles and was a true humanitarian with a deep sense of justice. In 1985, he was invited to visit South Africa, then under apartheid.
Apart from stepping aside from full-time research for three years in his early nineties to care for Irene, John continued to go to work most days. Three years before his Nobel prize, an interviewer on BBC radio put to him the widely held view that he should have received the award years earlier. “Prizes are decisions made by those who do the awarding,” he replied. “But that’s what I call ‘wood, hay and stubble’.
Large in stature, with a formidable intellect, John was genial and kind yet patrician and private, quietly considered but with a long, loud and exuberant laugh. As his frank autobiography describes, his life was shaped by the delights and trials of his rural childhood and defined by his and his wife’s shared faith.
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