https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/science/john-goodenough-dead.html
Thank you Prof John Goodenough for your work in commercializing Lithium Ion batteries.
He achieved his laboratory breakthrough in the 1980s in an Oxford laboratory, after which Sony picked up the invention and commercialized it at scale. Dr Goodenoughs contribution is the crucial link that made the invention of the lithium ion battery happen. Dr Goodenough didn’t receive any patent royalties – he signed away his rights and focused on core research and development at the universities at which he was a professor.
At MIT he was a member of teams that laid the groundwork for Random Access Memories in computers and developed plans for an air defense system.
Exxon initially patented a work by Dr Stanley Whittingham where Lithium was used along with Titanium Disulfide as cathode. Later Dr Goodenough improved the design with Cobalt Oxide and Lithium intercalated with it. That was the first battery with significant capacity. In 1991 Sony built commercially viable lithium ion batteries which led to an explosion in wireless technology as well as electric vehicles.