A Binghamton University professor has taken home the coveted Nobel Prize.

M. Stanley Whittingham, a distinguished professor in chemistry and materials science and engineering at the university, was awarded the prize for chemistry early Wednesday for his pioneering research that led to the development of the lithium-ion battery.

Whittingham shares the award with John Goodenough, of the the University of Texas at Austin, and Akira Yoshino, of the Asahi Kasei Corp. and Meijo University in Japan.

"I think it’s no question this will make more people know of the university and make people look up, 'Where is Binghamton,’" Whittingham said in a live video feed from a press conference at the university. "It’s very good for the university, very good for the locality, and any publicity is good as far as getting funding from the government."

Whittingham was at the Advanced Lithium Batteries for Automobile Applications conference in Ulm, Germany when he learned of the news. His colleagues held a dinner in his honor Wednesday night and Whittingham will travel back to New York on Thursday.

"Let me say it was a complete surprise this morning until someone walked over to me and said, 'There's a phone call from Stockholm for you,'" said Whittingham, who described his role as 90 percent research while also guiding many graduate students. "Raise the profile of energy storage, raise the profile of how we can have a cleaner environment and affect climate change in a positive manner."

FROM THE ARCHIVES:Binghamton University professor among chemistry's elite

"Through their work, they have created the right conditions for a wireless and fossil fuel-free society, and so brought the greatest benefit to humankind," the Nobel Prize website states.

During Wednesday's announcement, Göran K. Hansson, the vice chairman of the Nobel Prize's board of directors and secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said Goodenough was born in 1922 and is therefore the oldest Nobel Laureate ever awarded a prize.

This year's Nobel Prize amount is 9 million Swedish Kroner (about 900,000 U.S. dollars).

The prizes will be presented to Nobel Laureates at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. According to the Nobel Prize's website, awards in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, while the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway.

Who is M. Stanley Whittingham?

Whittingham was born in 1941 in Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

He received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in the 1960s from the University of Oxford before coming to the United States as a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University.

Whittingham came to Binghamton University in 1988 after 16 years at Exxon Research and Engineering Co., where he received the patent for a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and Schlumberger-Doll Research.

"(Binghamton University) was a small enough place that people collaborated. Faculty here are much more friendly," Whittingham said to the Press & Sun-Bulletin / pressconnects.com in 2015. " A student can go to a faculty member to ask to use the equipment, and they’ll let them use it. The big schools are very much individual empires. It’s just a much friendlier place."

In a 2015 interview with the Press & Sun Bulletin / pressconnects.com, Whittingham said working with students is his favorite part of his work.

"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," he said. "They’re excited about science just like I was."

At BU, he is director of the NorthEast Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES). In 2014, NEECES was awarded a $12.8 million, four-year grant from

the U.S. Department of Energy to fund Energy Frontier Research Centers to help

accelerate scientific breakthroughs needed to build a new 21st-century economy.

He also helped establish the school's Materials Science and Engineering Program.

Whittingham holds the original patent on the concept of the use of intercalation chemistry in high-power density, highly reversible lithium batteries.

"All these batteries are called intercalation batteries. It’s like putting jam in a sandwich. In the chemical terms, it means you have a crystal structure, and we can put lithium ions in, take them out, and the structure’s exactly the same afterwards," Whittingham told the Press & Sun-Bulletin / pressconnects.com in 2015. "We retain the crystal structure. That’s what makes these lithium batteries so good, allows them to cycle for so long."

He was the founder and principal editor of the journal Solid State Ionics and has penned more than 200 publications in scholarly journals. He holds 16 patents.

Learn more about M. Stanley Whittingham here: BU professor among chemistry's elite

An iPhone or laptop would not exist without lithium batteries, Whittingham explained.

"They’re talking now about carrying battery storage in their home, so if you have a power outage, you don’t lose power," he told the Press & Sun-Bulletin / pressconnects.com in 2015. "Or replacing generators. Maybe a large battery would be easier than a generator. I think you’re going to see far more PHE (plug-in hybrid electric) vehicles on the road. That’s what the U.S. is going to go to, I think. So you can do all your commuting on the battery, but if you want to drive to New York City or to Oswego, you’ve got a little engine there that keeps the battery charged."

In 2002, Whittingham was awarded the Battery Research Award of the Electrochemical Society for his contributions to “Intercalation Chemistry and Battery Materials." Two years later, he was elected a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society.

In the running for a Nobel

In 2015, Whittingham was considered a potential recipient of the Nobel Prize. He and Goodenough were included on a list of Citation Laureates for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry by Thomson Reuters prior to the announcement of the 2015 Nobel Prize.

"It’s nice. It’s recognition. I’d seen it a couple of years ago, but I hadn’t known much about it. This lithium battery has been nominated for a Nobel Prize before. We hear that scuttlebutt. This Reuters thing isn’t a nomination, it’s like their betting right — they’re the bookie. You look at Nobel Prizes, most of them are 20 years later," Whittingham said to the Press & Sun-Bulletin / pressconnects.com after he was included on the Reuters list.

When asked in 2015 how his life would change if he won the Nobel Prize, Whittingham's answer was simple.

"I don’t know. My wife would grumble. I’d probably travel even more than I travel now. At my age, it would have far less effect than someone who was 40 or 50 years old," he said to the Press & Sun-Bulletin / pressconnects.com. "It would have a bigger effect on the university. It would raise their profile one step higher. Even this Reuters announcement, it’s clearly been beneficial to the university. People will be saying, ‘What? What’s this Binghamton? Where is it?’"

Why did he win?

According to a news release on the Nobel Prize website, the foundation of the lithium-ion battery was laid during the oil crisis in the 1970s.

Whittingham worked on developing methods that could lead to fossil fuel-free energy technologies.

"He started to research superconductors and discovered an extremely energy-rich material, which he used to create an innovative cathode in a lithium battery," the news release states. "This was made from titanium disulphide which, at a molecular level, has spaces that can house — intercalate — lithium ions. The battery’s anode was partially made from metallic lithium, which has a strong drive to release electrons. This resulted in a battery that literally had great potential, just over two volts."

However, it was too explosive to be viable, since metallic lithium is reactive.

It was Goodenough who predicted that the cathode would have even greater potential if it was made using a metal oxide instead of a metal sulphide. In 1980, he demonstrated that cobalt oxide with intercalated lithium ions can produce as much as four volts.

And, with Goodenough’s cathode as a basis, Yoshino created the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in 1985.

Lithium-ion batteries first entered the market in 1991.

What is the Nobel Prize?

The Nobel Prize is named for Alfred Nobel, who signed his last will and testament on Nov. 27, 1895, giving the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace.

The announcement of this year's winners began Monday and will continue through Oct. 14.

Chemistry was the second prize area mentioned by Nobel in his will, according to the Nobel Prize website. The Nobel Prize in chemistry is awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden.

Between 1901 and 2019, the Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded 111 times to 184 Nobel Laureates.

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