TOKYO – Hideki Shirakawa, the Japanese chemist whose groundbreaking work on electrically conductive plastics helped earn him a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has died at the age of 90.
Shirakawa shared the Nobel honor with American scientists Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid after their research showed that certain plastics could carry electricity much like metals, a discovery that opened new possibilities for modern electronics and advanced materials.
The University of Tsukuba, where Shirakawa taught and conducted research after joining the institution in 1979, said he died on Aug. 24. No cause of death was given. The Yomiuri, Japan’s largest newspaper, reported that he died at a hospital in Yokohama, west of Tokyo.
READ MORE: Gloria Steinem, Pioneering Feminist Activist and Journalist, Dies at 92
Born in Tokyo in 1936, Shirakawa went on to earn a doctorate in engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966. A decade later, he moved into a research role at the University of Pennsylvania, where his collaboration with MacDiarmid and Heeger would lead to a major scientific breakthrough.
At a time when plastics were widely viewed as electrical insulators, the trio’s findings overturned conventional thinking. Their work helped lay the foundation for low-cost conductive polymers — materials lighter and more flexible than metal — now used in technologies including solar cells and mobile phone displays.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.