Hideki Shirakawa Biography - Nobel Prize Winner (2000)

Professor Hideki Shirakawa 白川 英樹 Shirakawa Hideki, born in Tokyo on August 20, 1936) is a Japanese chemist and winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of conductive polymers together with Alan J. Heeger and Alan G MacDiarmid.


He discovered the plastic film (polyacetylene) through which can flow an electric current when doped in 1977. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 in admiration of the discovery. With regard to the mechanism of electric conduction, it is highly believed that nonlinear excitations solitons play a role.

One of his relatives, Hitomi Yoshizawa, is a member of the singer group Morning Musume Morning Girls. Furthermore, Naoko Takahashi, the woman marathon gold medalist of the Sydney Olympics 2000 is also a relative.