Japanese Nobel Chemistry Laureate Hideki Shirakawa Dies at 90

VoM News Desk | September 3, 2026 | 10:56 PM IST | Breaking News, World | Follow on Google News

Japanese Nobel Chemistry Laureate Hideki Shirakawa Dies at 90

Japanese scientist Hideki Shirakawa, co-winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovering and developing conductive polymers, has died. He was 90.

The discovery by Shirakawa and two fellow American scientists, Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid, demonstrated that plastic could conduct electricity like metal and be used in applications such as electronics.

Shirakawa died on August 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, west of Tokyo.

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 McDiarmid and Heeger.

The three scientists’ findings that 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. [Assosiated Press]

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by VoM News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

VoM News Desk

VoM News is an online web portal in jammu Kashmir offers regional, National & global news.