Alan MacDiarmid facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alan MacDiarmid
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Alan MacDiarmid in Beijing, China, 2005
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Alan Graham MacDiarmid
14 April 1927 Masterton, New Zealand
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| Died | 7 February 2007 (aged 79) |
| Nationality | New Zealand, United States |
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| Thesis | The chemistry of some new derivatives of the silyl radical (1955) |
Alan Graham MacDiarmid (born April 14, 1927 – died February 7, 2007) was a famous scientist. He was a chemist born in New Zealand who later became an American citizen. In 2000, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with two other scientists for their amazing discovery.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Alan MacDiarmid was born in Masterton, New Zealand. He was one of five children in his family. His family was not wealthy, and times were tough during the Great Depression. This led his family to move to Lower Hutt, near Wellington, New Zealand.
When Alan was about ten years old, he found an old chemistry textbook belonging to his father. This book sparked his interest in chemistry. He taught himself a lot from this book and from other books he borrowed from the library.
Alan went to Hutt Valley High School. Later, he studied at Victoria University of Wellington. In 1943, he passed important university exams. To help pay for his studies, he worked part-time as a "lab boy" at Victoria University. He earned his first degree in 1947.
After getting his first degree, he continued to study chemistry. He even published his first scientific paper in the journal Nature in 1949. In 1951, he won a special scholarship called a Fulbright Fellowship. This allowed him to study in the United States at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He earned two more advanced degrees there. He then won another scholarship, which took him to University of Cambridge in England, where he earned a second PhD in 1955.
Career and Discoveries
After finishing his studies, Alan MacDiarmid worked as a teacher at the University of St Andrews in Scotland for a year. Then, he moved to the United States and joined the chemistry department at the University of Pennsylvania. He became a full professor there in 1964. He spent most of his career, 45 years, at the University of Pennsylvania. For the first 20 years, he focused on studying silicon chemistry.
In 2002, he also started teaching at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Amazing Conductive Plastics
Alan MacDiarmid is best known for his work on conductive polymers. These are special plastic materials that can conduct electricity, just like metals! This was a huge discovery because plastics are usually insulators, meaning they don't let electricity pass through.
He worked with a Japanese chemist named Hideki Shirakawa and an American physicist named Alan Heeger. They published their first findings in 1977. For this groundbreaking work, the three scientists shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000.
The Nobel Prize was given for showing that plastics can be made to conduct electricity after certain changes. This discovery has led to many useful inventions. For example, conductive plastics can be used to make:
- Anti-static materials for things like photographic film.
- "Smart" windows that can block sunlight when needed.
- Light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are used in many lights and screens.
- Solar cells that turn sunlight into electricity.
- Displays for mobile phones and other electronic devices.
Scientists believe that future developments in this area could make computers much smaller and faster!
Alan MacDiarmid also traveled around the world. He gave talks about how important it is for scientists from different countries to work together on new ideas. He believed that working together helps create more innovations in the 21st century. He published over 600 scientific papers and held 20 patents for his inventions.
Awards and Honours
Alan MacDiarmid received many important awards and honours for his work, including:
- Victoria University of Wellington gave him an honorary doctorate in 1999. They also created the Alan MacDiarmid Chair in Physical Chemistry in his honour. The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology and a building at the university are named after him.
- He won the 1999 American Chemical Society Award in Materials Chemistry.
- In 2000, the Royal Society of New Zealand gave him its highest honour, the Rutherford Medal.
- He became a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2002.
- In 2002, he was appointed to the Order of New Zealand, which is the highest honour in his home country.
- He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2003.
- In 2004, he received the Friendship Award from China. This is the highest honour China gives to foreign experts.
- The Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas was named after him in 2007.
- The Alan G. MacDiarmid Institute at Jilin University in China was named after him in 2001.
- A street in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, called MacDiarmid Place, was named after him in 2013.
Personal Life
Towards the end of his life, Alan MacDiarmid was unwell. In February 2007, he was planning to visit New Zealand. Sadly, he fell down the stairs at his home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, and passed away on February 7, 2007. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill.
Alan MacDiarmid's first wife, Marian Mathieu, passed away in 1990. They had four children: Heather, Dawn, Duncan, and Gail. He also had nine grandchildren. In 2005, he married his second wife, Gayl Gentile, who passed away in 2014.
Alan MacDiarmid was a cousin of the famous New Zealand painter Douglas MacDiarmid. After Alan won the Nobel Prize, Douglas painted a portrait of him for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.
See Also
In Spanish: Alan G. MacDiarmid para niños
