GoKawiilNobel chemist Hideki Shirakawa, discoverer of conductive plastics, dies at 90
Hideki Shirakawa, who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Alan MacDiarmid and Alan Heeger for discovering that polymers can conduct electricity, has died at age 90. His breakthrough came from research at Tokyo Institute of Technology, where a 1967 experimental error by a visiting researcher led to the creation of a metallic-looking polyacetylene film instead of the expected powder, which Shirakawa then developed further by doping it with other chemicals to make it electrically conductive.