M. Stanley Whittingham

Sir Stanley Whittingham
Whittingham in 2020
Born	Michael Stanley Whittingham (1941-12-22) 22 December 1941 (age 82) Nottingham, England
Nationality	British, American
Alma mater	New College, Oxford (BA, MA, DPhil)
Known for	Lithium-ion battery
Awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2019)
Scientific career
Fields	Chemist
Institutions	Binghamton University
Thesis	Microbalance studies of some oxide systems (1968)
Doctoral advisor	Peter Dickens
Other academic advisors	Robert Huggins (post-doc)

Sir Michael Stanley Whittingham (born 22 December 1941) is a British-American chemist. He is a professor of chemistry and director of both the Institute for Materials Research and the Materials Science and Engineering program at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He also serves as director of the Northeastern Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES) of the U.S. Department of Energy at Binghamton. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 alongside Akira Yoshino and John B. Goodenough.^[1][2]

Whittingham is a key figure in the history of lithium-ion batteries, which are used in everything from mobile phones to electric vehicles. He discovered intercalation electrodes and thoroughly described intercalation reactions in rechargeable batteries in the 1970s. He holds the patents on the concept of using intercalation chemistry in high power-density, highly reversible lithium-ion batteries. He also invented the first rechargeable lithium metal battery (LMB), patented in 1977 and assigned to Exxon for commercialization in small devices and electric vehicles. Whittingham's rechargeable lithium metal battery is based on a LiAl anode and an intercalation-type TiS₂ cathode. His work on lithium batteries laid the foundation for others' developments, so he is called the founding father of lithium-ion batteries.^[3]