Stanford Ovshinsky

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Stanford Ovshinsky (2005)

Stanford Robert Ovshinsky (born November 24, 1922 in Akron , † October 17, 2012 in Bloomfield Hills ) was an American inventor with over 200 US patents (2000) in the fields of solar cells, batteries and storage media.

Life

Ovshinsky was the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father was a scrap metal collector in Akron and active in the labor movement. Ovshinsky also retained a left-liberal social attitude from this period. Largely self-taught, he worked as a machinist and toolmaker for the rubber industry, which was well established in the Akron area, before he graduated from high school (1941). Shortly after the end of the Second World War, he founded his first company that manufactured a new type of drive for lathes. He sold his company to the New Britain Machine Company in Connecticut , which among other things used his invention for the production of artillery shells during the Korean War .

In the early 1950s he also dealt with cybernetics and neurophysiology with the aim of developing intelligent machines. In 1951 he became research director of a car company (Hupp Motorcar Company) in Detroit , for which he designed an electric transmission. With his brother Herb he founded his own company General Automation , with which he developed, among other things, a mechanical model of a nerve cell ( Ovitron ) using thin-film technology with chalcogenides , which he will continue to deal with in his inventions in the future. In 1960 he founded the Energy Conversion Laboratory (ECL) with his wife Iris (a PhD in biochemistry ). Here he developed phase-change technology with chalcogenides (first patents 1961), which was later mainly used for optical data storage ( CD-RW ) and then in phase-change random access memory . At that time his methods also became known under the name Ovonics (for Ovshinsky Electronics ). Back then, he was ahead of his time in the use of thin layers, amorphous semiconductors and nanostructured materials. At that time he also made contact with physicists such as John Bardeen , who sent him the physicist Hellmut Fritzsche from the University of Chicago, with whom he then worked a lot. In 1964 the company was renamed Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) and moved to Troy, Michigan .

Here, together with Masahiko Oshitani , he laid the foundations for the modern technology of NiMH batteries and founded the Ovonics Battery Company in 1982. In 1994 General Motors acquired a majority stake in Ovonics, which controlled battery development, including patents, and the manufacture of large NiMH batteries. The acquisition was justified with the aim of developing NiMH batteries for the GM EV1 electric car , which secured the approval of the inventor and company founder Stan Ovshinsky. Version 2 of the EV-1 with NiMH batteries was introduced in 1998 and came onto the market in 1999. In an interview in the 2006 documentary Who killed the electric car? Ovshinsky explained that the American auto industry was trying to prevent the development of electric vehicle technology and was taking action against the CARB legislation. After the relaxation of the CARB laws due to pressure from the auto industry, the EV1 program was terminated by GM, although a new generation of batteries had been developed. In field tests, the Ovonics NiMH battery had increased the EV1's range to over 150 miles. GM sold its majority stake in Ovonics to Texaco , which was acquired by Chevron .

Stanford R. Ovshinsky researched storage media such as the CD-RW (a prototype was produced by ECD in 1970) and thin-film solar cells (for which he invented a method for assembly line production in 1983 , Continuous amorphous solar cell production system ) made of amorphous silicon for the production of flexible solar modules as Ribbons or shingles. In Troy, Michigan, he also worked on liquid crystal displays (LCDs), fuel cells and hybrid car technologies .

After the death of his wife Iris in 2006, he left ECD and founded Ovshinsky Innovation LLC .

Ovshinsky has received several honorary doctorates (including the Illinois Institute of Technology , University of Michigan , New York Institute of Technology , Wayne State University ) and received numerous awards, including the Rudolf Diesel Medal in 1968. In 1984 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . He was married three times, since 2007 in third marriage to the physicist Rosa Young, who worked at ECD.

Ovchinsky died on October 17, 2012 of complications from prostate cancer .

In 2015 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame .

literature

  • Hellmut Fritzsche, Brian Schwartz. Stanford R. Ovshinsky: The Science and Technology of an American Genius . Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2008.
  • Lillian Hoddeson, Peter Garrett: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow. The Life and Inventions of Stanford R. Ovshinsky . Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018.
  • Lillian Hoddeson, Peter Garrett: The discovery of Ovshinsky switching and phase-change memory , Physics Today, Volume 71, 2018, Issue 6
  • Lillian Hoddeson, Peter Garrett, Guy Wicker: Stanford Ovshinsky and the Genesis of the Cognitive Computer , Proc. IEEE, Volume 107, 2019, Issue 7

Web links

Commons : Stanford Ovshinsky  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barnaby J. Feder: Stanford R. Ovshinsky Dies at 89, a Self-Taught Maverick in Electronics. The New York Times , October 18, 2012, accessed October 19, 2012 .
  2. ↑ Chris Paine, 2006: Why the electric car had to die , web film, accessed April 24, 2012 (see: 0h: 46min: 46s)
  3. ↑ GreenCar.com, March 7, 2008: 5 Things You Need to Know About Nickel-Metal-Hybrid Batteries ( Memento of November 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), inserted on February 13, 2012
  4. ↑ a b c d Michael Shnayerson: The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle , published by Random House, August 27, 1996, ISBN 978-0-679-42105-4
  5. ↑ carfolio.com: 1998 GM EV1 Gen II NiMH , added February 13, 2012
  6. ↑ Kingoftheroad: Generation II Battery pack , added February 13, 2012
  7. ↑ County Weekly, May 8, 2003: Dude, Wheres My Electric Car!?! ( Memento of May 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), inserted on February 13, 2012
  8. ↑ Chris Paine, 2006: Why the electric car had to die , web film, accessed September 14, 2012 (see: 1h: 42min: 16s)
  9. ↑ I always wanted to solve social problems - on the death of Stanford Ovshinsky. heise online, October 19, 2012, accessed on October 19, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Ovshinsky, Stanford
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ovshinsky, Stanford Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American inventor
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Akron
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 2012
Place of death Bloomfield Hills