Alan MacDiarmid

Alan MacDiarmid

Alan Graham MacDiarmid (born April 14, 1927 in Masterton , New Zealand , † February 7, 2007 in Philadelphia ) was a New Zealand chemist . Together with Alan J. Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa , he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 for the discovery and development of conductive polymers .

Life

MacDiarmid was born in Masterton, New Zealand in 1927. His family was relatively poor and the Great Depression made life difficult. When he was about ten years old, he developed an interest in chemistry through an old textbook from his father, and learned about it through that book and books from the library. He later worked as an assistant in the chemistry department at Victoria University of Wellington and eventually studied there. He graduated in 1951 with honors and won a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Wisconsin where he in 1953 at Norris F. Hall with the theme Isotopic exchange in complex cyanides - simple cyanide systems doctorate . In 1959 he became a Sloan Research Fellow . He later worked for a short time at St. Andrews University in Scotland . MacDiarmid was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for over 50 years .

Honors

• The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at Victoria University of Wellington was named after him.
• Member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Friendship Prize (China) (2004)
• Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2000 with Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa

Web links

Commons : Alan MacDiarmid  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the award ceremony 2000 to Alan MacDiarmid (English)
• "Alan MacDiarmid, 79, Who Won Nobel for Work With Plastic, Dies" , New York Times , February 8th 2007
• Search for Alan G. MacDiarmid in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Alan G. MacDiarmid at academictree.org, accessed on January 1, 2019.