John Bannister Goodenough

John Bannister Goodenough was an American materials scientist, a solid-state physicist, and a Nobel laureate in chemistry. He was a professor of Mechanical, Materials Science, and Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin from 1986 until his death in 2023. He is credited with identifying the Goodenough-Kanamori rules of the sign of the magnetic superexchange in materials, with developing materials for computer random-access memory and with inventing cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries. Goodenough was born in Jena, Germany, in July 1922, to American parents, Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough and Helen Miriam (Lewis) Goodenough. His father was working on his Ph.D. at the Harvard Divinity School at the time of John's birth and later became a professor in the history of religion at Yale University. John's brother, Ward Goodenough, was a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist. The brothers attended boarding school at Groton in Massachusetts. Goodenough served as a U.S. military meteorologist in World War II after graduating from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He then obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago in 1952 under the supervision of Clarence Zener. He became a researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he worked on developing random-access memory devices for computers. In 1976, he moved to the University of Oxford as the head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, where he invented the lithium cobalt oxide cathode, which enabled the development of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. In 1986, Goodenough joined the University of Texas at Austin as a professor of engineering. He continued his research on battery materials and discovered new cathodes based on manganese oxide and iron phosphate. He also worked on developing a solid-state glass battery that could offer higher energy density and longer cycle life than conventional batteries. Goodenough was awarded many prestigious honors for his contributions to science and technology, including the Japan Prize, the Enrico Fermi Award, the National Medal of Science, the IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies, the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the Welch Award, and the Copley Medal. In 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries. At 97 years old, he became the oldest Nobel laureate in history. Goodenough was married to Irene Wiseman from 1951 until her death in 2016. They had two children: John A. Goodenough and Katherine Goodenough Youngquist. He died at an assisted living facility in Austin, Texas, on June 25, 2023, one month shy of his 101st birthday.