John Goodenough has died
It cannot be understated just how much his invention changed the world. Li-ion batteries were the key that allowed us to have truly portable devices that had decent battery life and light weight. It also broke us away from things like Discmans powered by disposable AA batteries. From Laptops, the smart phones and nowadays bikes, cars and trucks - the amount of change that it has brought is astounding. Anyone old enough to have used devices before Li-ion can remember the weird oddities you would have of inconsistent power and odd charging properties.<p>However, from a hyper environmentalist position, this invention unfortunately ended up fueling all manners of wars through the specific material requirements, cobalt being the prime example, it also sort of helped kick off the idea of devices that could be almost disposable (non-replaceable batteries) but these are all secondary flow on impacts of Goodenough&#x27;s core invention.<p>More a lesson that even things intended to be good can have weird unintended consequences in a chaotic world.  It was never his intent to do so it just worked out that way.<p>The John was the living personification of the scientific inventor should be admired, we need more like him and here is hoping that the future will continue in that endeavour of progress.