Polymer Chemistry

John Goodenough

Professor
University of Texas
United states

Biography

John Bannister Goodenough is the Virginia H. Cockrell Centennial Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He is known for his insights into d-electron behavior in transition-metal oxides, including cooperative orbital ordering now known as cooperative Jahn-Teller ordering, which he used to realize the ferrimagnetic-oxide memory elements of the first random-access memory of the digital computer and to articulate the Goodenough-Kanamori rules for the sign of interatomic spin-spin interactions; the origin of metallic d electrons in oxides, which solved the problem of metallic oxide perovskites and is used for the catalytic cathodes of the solid oxide fuel cell; the character of the lattice instabilities at the crossover from localized to itinerant d-electron behavior, which are manifest as charge-density waves and high-temperature superconductivity in the copper oxides; and the oxide cathodes that have enabled realization of the Li-ion rechargeable batteries of the wireless revolution. Goodenough received a B.A. in Mathematics from Yale University in 1943 (Class of 1944) while serving as a meteorologist in the USAAF during World War II; he obtained an M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 1951 and 1952. From 1952 to 1976, he was a Research Scientist and Group Leader at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 1976, he accepted an appointment as Professor and Head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory in Oxford, England; and facing retirement in England in 1986, he accepted his present appointment in the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Goodenough is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Engineering, Sciences, and Inventors; a Foreign Associate of L’Academie des Sciences de L’Institute de France, Academia de Ciencas Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales of Spain, and the Royal Society (UK). His awards include Laureate of the Japan Prize, 2001; the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, 2009; the National Medal of Science, 2012; the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the National Academy of Engineering, 2014, Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate, 2015, and the Eric and Sheila Samsun Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation in 2015. His publications include Magnetism and the Chemical Bond (1967), Les oxydes des métaux de transition (1973), Witness to Grace (2008), and (with Kevin Huang) Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Technology: Principles, Performance, and Operations (2009); 94 book chapters and reviews, over 800 refereed journal articles.

Research Area

He is known for his insights into d-electron behavior in transition-metal oxides, including cooperative orbital ordering now known as cooperative Jahn-Teller ordering, which he used to realize the ferrimagnetic-oxide memory elements of the first random-access memory of the digital computer and to articulate the Goodenough-Kanamori rules for the sign of interatomic spin-spin interactions; the origin of metallic d electrons in oxides, which solved the problem of metallic oxide perovskites and is used for the catalytic cathodes of the solid oxide fuel cell; the character of the lattice instabilities at the crossover from localized to itinerant d-electron behavior, which are manifest as charge-density waves and high-temperature superconductivity in the copper oxides; and the oxide cathodes that have enabled realization of the Li-ion rechargeable batteries of the wireless revolution.