2000 Nobel prize laureate in chemistry Shirakawa dies at 90

Japan's Hideki Shirakawa, a 2000 Nobel laureate in chemistry known for his discovery and development of conductive polymers, died in late August, his family said Thursday. He was 90.Shirakawa, a professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, was the ninth Japanese to win a Nobel prize and the second from the country to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry after Kenichi Fukui in 1981.He shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000 with American scientists Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid.Their discovery, demonstrating that plastics can conduct electricity, has a wide range of application…READ FULL ARTICLE