Hideki Shirakawa, Nobel Prize-winning chemist, dies at 90

Hideki Shirakawa, the Japanese scientist who co-received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has passed away at the age of 90. According to reports from the University of Tsukuba, Shirakawa died on August 24.

Shirakawa was recognized for his groundbreaking discovery and development of conductive polymers. Alongside American scientists Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid, he demonstrated that plastics could conduct electricity like metals. This discovery challenged the conventional wisdom that plastics are non-conductive and paved the way for lightweight, flexible, and inexpensive conductive materials used in modern electronics, such as solar cells and mobile phone screens.

Born in Tokyo in 1936, Shirakawa earned his doctorate from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966. He later served as a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania before joining the University of Tsukuba in 1979, where he conducted his influential research.