2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino. The prize was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on 9 October 2019.

The citation

The citation reads: "for the development of lithium-ion batteries". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

John B. Goodenough was born in 1922 in Jena, Germany, and is affiliated with the University of Texas, Austin. M. Stanley Whittingham was born in 1941 in United Kingdom, and is affiliated with Binghamton University, State University of New York, New York. Akira Yoshino was born in 1948 in Suita, Japan, and is affiliated with Asahi Kasei Corporation, Tokyo and Meijo University, Nagoya.

Why it matters

Lithium-ion batteries power mobile phones, laptops and electric cars. Goodenough, who did key work at the University of Oxford, is at 97 the oldest Nobel laureate.

The prize

The prize is worth 9 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.