Chemical engineers who changed the world Handheld electronics
and gadgets – from mobile phones to laptops – have transformed
the way we live over the past decade or so. But the revolution
led by Steve Jobs and his slightly less famous compatriot, Adam
Osborne (the inventor of the laptop), would not have been
possible without high-power rechargeable batteries, and they
were brought to market thanks to a chemical engineer. Like many
engineers, Yoshio Nishi is not a household name but frankly he
should be, for he led the team that turned the lithium ion
battery from a research concept into practical, commercially
viable reality. Nishi, who studied solid physical chemistry at
the engineering department of Keio University in Tokyo, spent a
lifetime working for Sony. In the mid-1980s he was appointed
general manager of the lithium ion battery development team.
Lithium ion batteries promised to overcome the environmental
problems associated with nickel-cadmium batteries, and also had
a much greater energy density. E