In M. Stanley Whittingham’s Nobel Prize Banquet speech on December 10th 2019, which he held on behalf of himself and the other two Chemistry Laureates, John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino, he emphasized the fact that science is truly an international endeavor and science knows no geographical boundaries. His fellow Laureates are from the US and Japan, and Whittingham himself was born in Nottingham, United Kingdom, in 1941. In 1951 he went to Stamford School and took the mathematics, chemistry and physics track in higher sixth form. In his Nobel Lecture in Stockholm in December last year he said that especially two teachers at this school drove him to science; Major Lamb in chemistry and Squibs Bowman in physics. “They got me excited about it,” he says. He also states that the school’s headmaster also played a key role, mentoring him to manage his Latin course in order to be accepted to New College Oxford.

Whittingham has also said in interviews that his favorite part of his work is working with the students. “They’re young, they keep you young. That’s one of the reasons I came back from industry, because in industry you all age together. They’re excited about science just like I was.” (Source: Binghamton press).

No disciplinary boundaries

In his Banquet speech, Whittingham also emphasized that science knows no disciplinary boundaries. He was a chemist from Oxford, where he earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees, who came to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. In his lecture he also acknowledged two important mentors and teachers, Peter G. Dickens, in inorganic chemistry, including metallurgy, at New College, Oxford and Robert A. Huggins in materials science and engineering at Stanford.

Lithium-ion batteries

Whittingham developed lithium-ion batteries in the early 1970s, when he was working at the company Exxon. “During the large gas crisis in the 70s, Exxon and other companies decided to be energy companies, not just oil companies, and they wanted to develop batteries for electric vehicles. That’s what got us started,” he described in an interview at wskg.org.

After 16 years at Exxon, in 1988, Whittingham came to the State University of New York’s Binghamton campus, known as Binghamton University, where he is still performing research on the lithium battery. In an interview with Nobel Media immediately after the Nobel Prize announcement he stated that the development of improving the battery technology is going faster than anybody expects and he is hopeful about the future and the goal of becoming a fossil fuel-free world.
“I think we can make batteries at least double the energy density of those today. You know, we can’t go much beyond that,” he said in an interview with Volkswagen 2019.