Chemist Akira Yoshino gets 28th Japanese Nobel Prize

The researcher shares the prestigious award with the American John B. Goodenough and the British Stanley Whittingham. The trio won thanks to studies on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: "They revolutionized our lives". In the ranking of nations by number of winners, Tokyo ranks seventh on a par with Switzerland.

Tokyo (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Japanese Akira Yoshino (photo 1) is among the three researchers to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, thanks to the invention and development of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

This was announced yesterday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, underlining how the development of this technology has "revolutionized our lives". It is applied “in everything: mobile phones, laptop electric vehicles; allowing significant quantities of solar and wind energy to be stored, makes a society without fossil fuels possible ".

For the Land of the Rising Sun it is the 28th Nobel prize. In the ranking of nations by number of winners, Tokyo ranks seventh with Switzerland.

Yoshino, 71, shares the prestigious award with the American John B. Goodenough - who at 97 is the oldest person ever to win the Nobel Prize - and the 78-year-old British Stanley Whittingham (Photo 2).

The latter developed the first functional lithium battery in the early 1970s. Goodenough doubled its potential in the following decade and Yoshino eliminated pure lithium from the battery, making it much safer to use.

 The Japanese researcher works at Asahi Kasei Corp., a Japanese company operating in the chemical industry, and teaches at Meijo University in Nagoya, in the Aichi prefecture. He was confident that the discoveries he had worked for would win the Nobel Prize, but he didn't expect it to happen so soon.

Yoshino held a press conference last night at the Asahi Kasei headquarters in Tokyo. He stated that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has covered such a wide range of studies as to predict a long wait before the Committee turned to the devices area.

 "I thought - he said - that we would have to wait a long time, but I used to tell people that we would certainly win when our turn came. Anyway, surprise, surprise! " Yoshino was the first to contact his wife to give her the news of the victory: "I spoke to her only briefly and I said:" I got it ". She was so amazed that her knees almost gave way. "

• japan
• nobel
• chemistry
• batteries
• lithium
• ions
• akira yoshino
• Stanley whittingham
• john b. goodenough