Tokyo, Sept. 3 -- 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. Born in Tokyo in 1936, Shirakawa earned a doctoral degree in engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.