Rate My Professor M. Stanley Whittingham

M. Stanley Whittingham is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he joined in 1988. He serves as Founding Director and Director of the NorthEast Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES), Director of the Institute for Materials Research, and Director of the Materials Science and Engineering program. Whittingham also holds the positions of Chief Innovation Officer and R&D Pillar Lead for Battery-NY and the Upstate NY Energy Storage Engine. He earned his BA in Chemistry in 1964, MA in 1967, and DPhil in Chemistry in 1968 from Oxford University. After completing his doctorate, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Earlier in his career, he worked at Exxon Research and Engineering Company, where he developed the first prototype of a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in 1976 using a titanium disulfide cathode and published the findings in Science. For this pioneering work on lithium-ion batteries, Whittingham shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John B. Goodenough and Akira Yoshino. He previously worked for Schlumberger and held visiting positions, including at Stony Brook University.

Whittingham's research focuses on elucidating the chemical and structural limiting mechanisms of intercalation reactions using in-situ and ex-situ synthetic and characterization approaches to develop new materials and synthetic methods for novel inorganic oxide materials. His efforts target improvements in energy storage for renewable energy sources and electric vehicles, including studies on single-phase reactions in battery electrodes and materials characterization at national laboratories. Key publications include "Lithium Batteries and Cathode Materials" in Chemical Reviews (2004), "Solid State Ionics - the key to the discovery, introduction and domination of lithium batteries for portable energy storage" in Solid State Ionics (2018), "Can Multielectron Intercalation Reactions Be the Basis of Next Generation Batteries?" in Accounts of Chemical Research (2018), and "KVOPO₄: A New High Capacity Multielectron Na-Ion Battery Cathode" in Advanced Energy Materials (2018). His honors include election to the National Academy of Engineering (2018), the Materials Research Society Turnbull Award (2018), the ISSI Senior Scientist Award (2017), the Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate (2015), and the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2006-2007). Whittingham's contributions have had a profound impact on materials chemistry and electrochemistry, enabling the lithium-ion batteries that power portable electronics, laptops, tablets, cellphones, and electric vehicles.