M. Stanley Whittingham

Facts

Stanley Whittingham

© Nobel Media. Photo: A. Mahmoud

M. Stanley Whittingham
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019

Born: 22 December 1941, United Kingdom

Affiliation at the time of the award: Binghamton University, State University of New York, New York, NY, USA

Prize motivation: "for the development of lithium-ion batteries."

Prize share: 1/3

Life

Stanley Whittingham was born in Nottingham in Great Britain. He studied at Oxford University and completed his doctorate there in 1968. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the United States, he worked for the Exxon and Schlumberger oil companies before becoming a professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1988.

Work

Storing electrical energy in batteries is a key factor in solving the world's energy supply. The element lithium is useful in batteries since it willingly releases electrons. In the 1970s, Stanley Whittingham developed an innovative cathode in a lithium battery. This was made from titanium disulphide which, at a molecular level, has spaces that can house lithium ions. Whittingham's contributions were crucial for the development of lithium-ion batteries, which are used in for example mobile phones and electric cars.

To cite this section
MLA style: M. Stanley Whittingham – Facts – 2019. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. Tue. 29 Sep 2020. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/whittingham/facts/>

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