Shirakawa Hideki

Shirakawa Hideki

(born Aug. 20, 1936, Tokyo, Japan) Japanese chemist. He earned a Ph.D. from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966. After graduation he began teaching at the University of Tsukuba. In 1977 he started collaborating with Alan J. Heeger and Alan G. MacDiarmid, conducting experiments on the polymer polyacetylene. Their work demonstrated that certain plastics can be chemically changed to conduct electricity almost as readily as metals. Other conductive polymers were later discovered, and the finding was expected to play a significant role in the emerging field of molecular electronics. With Heeger and MacDiarmid, Shirakawa was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000.