Who was John B. Goodenough? Creator of Lithium-Ion Battery Dead at 100

American scientist, John B. Goodenough who was the creator of the Lithium-Ion battery, has died at the age of 100. He died at an assisted living facility in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, June 25, 2023.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, he continued his career as head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the  University f Oxford. He did numerous works at the institution and is credited with significant research essential to the development of commercial lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

Goodenough was able to expand upon previous work from M. Stanley Whittingham on battery materials, and found in 1980 that by using Li_xCoO₂  as a lightweight, high energy density cathode material, he could double the capacity of lithium-ion batteries.

His work was commercialized through Sony by Akira Yoshino, who had contributed additional improvements to the battery construction. Goodenough received the Japan Prize in 2001 for his discoveries of the materials critical to the development of lightweight high energy density rechargeable lithium batteries.