Three researchers were honored with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry this morning for their roles in the development of lithium-ion batteries, a technology that has made possible our mobile electronic civilization of cellular phones and electric cars. John Goodenough of the University of Texas, Austin, M. Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University and Akira Yoshino of Meijo University share equally in the prize.

“We should appreciate that our whole world has been transformed by the lithium-ion battery,” said Clare Grey, a professor of chemistry at the University of Cambridge who has worked with both Goodenough and Whittingham. “It’s the lithium-ion battery that’s really underpinned the whole portable electronics revolution and is also making increased reduction of CO 2 possible,” she added.

“Over two-thirds of the world’s population own a mobile device, be it a smart phone, a laptop or tablet, and nearly all [are] powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries,” Paul Coxon, a professor of materials science and metallurgy at the University of Cambridge, wrote in an email. “They are the hidden workhorses of the mobile era, which came about thanks to fundamental research that began over 40 years ago.” Today’s prize honors the roles that Goodenough, Whittingham and Yoshino each played in that transformational work.

When the researchers started their work more than four decades ago, the world was faced with an energy crisis and an environmental one, both of which had been building for decades. At the dawn of the electric era in the late 19th century, batteries were common fixtures of early automobiles and other devices. But they were heavy and inefficient, and research on improving them stagnated. Petroleum fuels quickly took over as the main source of energy to power automobiles and other demanding systems.

But by the 1960s, the dangers of such heavy reliance on oil were becoming apparent. In the United States, oil shortages, coupled with smog-filled air in the cities and other environmental dangers, made it clear that research was needed (and quickly) to find more sustainable ways of storing and using energy.

And so, work on batteries made a comeback. In particular, scientists sought one that could take advantage of lithium, the lightest metal in the periodic table and a material particularly predisposed to forming ions by giving up electrons. But “in order to use lithium in a battery, you really need to tame its reactivity,” Olof Ramström, a professor of chemistry at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell and a member of the Nobel Prize committee, said during the announcement today. “And that’s exactly what the work of the laureates has achieved.”

Batteries essentially store and release energy through a series of chemical reactions that occur at two electrodes, a positively charged cathode and a negatively charged anode. Positive ions move from anode to cathode through an electrolyte between the two, which in turn prompts electrons to flow the other way through a circuit set up to power a connected device. This process is reversed to make the battery rechargeable.