Japanese scientist Hideki Shirakawa, co-winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has died at age 90. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
Shirakawa shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with American scientists Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid for the discovery and development of conductive polymers. Their research demonstrated that plastic could conduct electricity like metal and be used in electronics.
Shirakawa died on Aug. 24, according to the University of Tsukuba, where he taught and researched after joining in 1979. The university did not specify a cause of death. Japan's largest newspaper, the Yomiuri, said Shirakawa died at a hospital in Yokohama.
Born in Tokyo in 1936, Shirakawa earned a doctoral degree in engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966. Ten years later, he became a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with MacDiarmid and Heeger.
The scientists' findings, which defied common sense that plastics are not conductive, paved the way for the development of inexpensive conductive materials that are lighter and more flexible than metals and used in solar cells and mobile phone screens.