Shirakawa Hideki, an emeritus professor at Tsukuba University who developed electrically conductive plastics known as "conductive polymers" and won the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has died at 90.
According to NHK and other Japanese media on the 3rd, Professor Shirakawa died at a hospital in Yokohama on the 24th.
Professor Shirakawa discovered that plastic can conduct electricity like metal under certain conditions and jointly won the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry with U.S. professors Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid for developing conductive polymers. Conductive polymers have since been used in a wide range of electronic and energy fields, including smartphone displays and capacitors.
Born in Tokyo in 1936, Professor Shirakawa completed his doctoral program at Tokyo Institute of Technology (now Tokyo Science University) in 1966. He later served as a professor at Tsukuba University and as a member of the Council for Science and Technology Policy under Japan's Cabinet Office.
While researching at Tokyo Institute of Technology, he noted during an experiment that polyacetylene, a type of plastic, can conduct electricity, and based on that advanced research on conductive polymers.