Alan MacDiarmid

Alan MacDiarmid
Born	Alan Graham MacDiarmid 14 April 1927
Birthplace	Masterton, New Zealand
Died	7 February 2007 (aged 79) Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, United States
Nationality	New Zealand, American
Occupation	Chemist
Known for	Discovery and development of conducting polymers
Education	Ph.D., University of Cambridge (1955)
Awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2000), Order of New Zealand
Website	http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~macdiarm/

Alan Graham MacDiarmid, ONZ FRS (14 April 1927 – 7 February 2007), was a New Zealand-born American chemist who fundamentally changed how we understand plastics. His work on electrically conducting polymers opened entirely new frontiers in materials science. Born in modest circumstances in the small town of Masterton, New Zealand, MacDiarmid used academic scholarships and sheer curiosity to climb his way to becoming one of the twentieth century's most distinguished chemists. In 2000, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Alan J. Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa for "the discovery and development of conducting polymers."

Most of his career happened at the University of Pennsylvania, where he held the Blanchard Professorship of Chemistry. His research showed that certain organic polymers, materials everyone had written off as insulators, could be chemically modified to conduct electricity. That discovery had enormous implications for electronics, energy storage, and sensor technology. MacDiarmid never lost his ties to New Zealand, and when he died in February 2007, he was preparing to travel home.

Early Life

Alan Graham MacDiarmid was born on 14 April 1927 in Masterton, a town in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand's North Island. One of five children in a struggling family, he grew up with limited money. His father worked as an engineer, and the 1930s Great Depression hit hard.

The family later moved to Lower Hutt, near Wellington, hoping for better opportunities. Young Alan learned to make do with little. Around age ten, he found one of his father's old chemistry textbooks and became completely absorbed in it. He didn't understand much at first. Still, he read it cover to cover, and that book set his life's direction. Chemistry had captured him.

He attended Hutt Valley High School in Lower Hutt and excelled despite the family's tight finances. His parents valued education, which mattered. To support himself and help out at home, he took part-time work as a janitor and laboratory assistant at Victoria University College (now Victoria University of Wellington) while also attending classes there. Not many students had that kind of opportunity. The arrangement let him pay for his own schooling while getting actual laboratory experience.

That early exposure mattered enormously. Lab work combined with his natural talent for chemistry strengthened his resolve to pursue scientific research. His upbringing shaped him: hardship mixed with intellectual aspiration, which later became his lifelong commitment to making science available to young people from any background.

Education

He started his university studies at Victoria University College in Wellington, working part-time to pay his way. Both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science came from Victoria, with master's research that hinted at what'd come later in inorganic and materials chemistry.

A Fulbright Fellowship opened the door to further study. He went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States and earned a second Master of Science degree there.

Then came a Shell Graduate Scholarship for doctoral research at the University of Cambridge in England. He finished his Ph.D. in 1955 with a thesis on "The chemistry of some new derivatives of the silyl radical." Working under H.J. Emeléus, the work focused on silicon chemistry and built expertise in inorganic synthesis. Those skills would prove invaluable for the conducting polymer research that later brought him the Nobel Prize.

After Cambridge, he spent time at the University of St Andrews in Scotland before moving back to the United States for his academic career.

Career

Early Academic Career at the University of Pennsylvania

In 1955, he joined the University of Pennsylvania's chemistry faculty in Philadelphia. Over five decades there, he rose to the Blanchard Professorship of Chemistry, one of the department's most prestigious positions.

Early on, his research centered on silicon chemistry and inorganic compounds, building from his Cambridge doctoral work. He became expert at making and analyzing novel inorganic materials, including sulfur nitride polymers. That work on sulfur nitride, a polymeric inorganic material with metallic properties, would eventually point him toward the research that made him famous.

His research group became known for collaboration and an international character. He mentored graduate students and postdoctoral researchers from around the world, and many went on to build their own distinguished careers in chemistry and materials science.

Discovery of Conducting Polymers

The research that earned MacDiarmid the Nobel Prize started in the mid-1970s from a lucky meeting and cross-disciplinary partnerships. Chance and curiosity combined to produce a transformative breakthrough.

In 1975, he visited Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and met Hideki Shirakawa, a chemist working on polyacetylene, a polymer made from acetylene. Shirakawa had accidentally created a silvery film of polyacetylene with striking metallic sheen. A student in his lab had used much higher catalyst concentration than intended, producing film instead of powder.

MacDiarmid's work on sulfur nitride polymers made him instantly recognize the potential significance. A polymer with metallic appearance? He invited Shirakawa to the University of Pennsylvania. There, working with physicist Alan J. Heeger, also at Penn, the three scientists set about changing the polymer's electrical properties.

In 1977, they made their landmark discovery: exposing polyacetylene films to iodine vapor, a process called "doping" borrowed from semiconductor terminology, increased the polymer's electrical conductivity by more than ten million times. The doped polyacetylene reached conductivity levels approaching those of metals. That challenged the assumption, held for decades, that organic polymers were inherently electrical insulators.

The discovery mattered for several reasons. It showed that the line between conductors and insulators wasn't fixed. It proved that the electronic properties of organic materials could be precisely tuned through chemical modification. It created an entirely new field, sometimes called "synthetic metals" or "organic electronics," with practical implications across many industries.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited "the discovery and development of conducting polymers" when they awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to all three researchers. The Academy noted that this discovery opened a new field where chemistry and physics intersect, with applications in light-emitting diodes, solar cells, anti-static coatings, and electromagnetic shielding.

Polyaniline and Later Research

After the initial polyacetylene work, MacDiarmid kept making significant discoveries in conducting polymers. He became especially known for his research on polyaniline, a conducting polymer with real practical advantages over polyacetylene: it was more stable in air and easier to process.

Polyaniline came from the monomer aniline and had been known since the nineteenth century as an organic dye (aniline black). But MacDiarmid and his collaborators showed it could be made electrically conductive through acid-base chemistry, simpler and more controllable than halogen doping. Polyaniline could be processed from solution, stayed stable in air, and cost less to produce than many other conducting polymers.

His group published extensively throughout the 1980s and 1990s on polyaniline synthesis, characterization, and applications. His work helped establish how chemical structure, doping level, and processing conditions influence the electronic and optical properties of conducting polymers.

International Collaborations and Outreach

Throughout his career, MacDiarmid was committed to building international scientific partnerships. His initial work with Shirakawa in Japan showed this approach, and he maintained active collaborations with scientists in many countries: New Zealand, China, Brazil, and South Korea.

He held visiting professorships and honorary positions at institutions outside the United States. The Asia-Pacific region particularly interested him. He visited China multiple times and worked to strengthen scientific ties between the United States and China.

New Zealand remained central to him. He returned frequently to lecture and work with New Zealand scientists, and he pushed hard for increased government investment in research there. He was involved with the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence at Victoria University of Wellington named in his honor.

Education was something he cared about deeply. He frequently spoke about curiosity-driven research and making science accessible to people from all economic backgrounds, drawing on his own experience of growing up in financial hardship in New Zealand.

Applications of Conducting Polymers

The field that MacDiarmid helped create expanded rapidly after 1977. Conducting polymers found uses across many technologies. Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) in smartphone and television displays rely on principles of electrically active organic materials that MacDiarmid and his collaborators established. Other applications: organic solar cells, electrochromic windows, anti-corrosion coatings, chemical and biological sensors, rechargeable batteries, and supercapacitors.

The 2000 Nobel Prize announcement noted that practical applications were already appearing, with anti-static coatings, "smart windows" that changed opacity in response to electrical signals, and prototype organic semiconductor devices all in development or use.

Personal Life

He married Marian Mathieu, his first wife, with whom he had several children. After her death, he married Gayl Gentile. He became a U.S. citizen while keeping his deep attachment to New Zealand.

Colleagues and students knew him as warm, generous, and genuinely enthusiastic about science. Despite his Nobel laureate status and international reputation, he stayed accessible and approachable, engaging with students and young researchers with real interest.

He often talked about his New Zealand roots and how growing up during economic hardship shaped him. His early experience, including that janitor work at Victoria University College, instilled a strong work ethic and taught him how transformative education could be.

Alan MacDiarmid died on 7 February 2007 at his home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb. He was 79. Reports indicate he died following a fall at home; he'd been preparing to leave for New Zealand when it happened. His colleague Alan Heeger wrote that MacDiarmid's "health had been declining over recent years," but he stayed intellectually engaged with science until the very end.

Recognition

Throughout his career, MacDiarmid received numerous awards and honors. The 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry capped them all.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize jointly to MacDiarmid, Alan J. Heeger, and Hideki Shirakawa in October 2000 "for the discovery and development of conducting polymers." When the three went to Stockholm in December 2000 for the ceremonies, they all delivered lectures and participated in public events. In a joint interview, they discussed the collaborative nature of their discovery and the serendipitous circumstances that brought them together. In his banquet speech, Heeger acknowledged how shared the prize was and the central role MacDiarmid and Shirakawa played.

He was appointed to the Order of New Zealand (ONZ), the highest honor in the New Zealand honors system. Membership is limited to no more than twenty living people at any time. The appointment recognized his contributions to science and his standing as a distinguished New Zealander on the world stage.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), one of international science's most prestigious distinctions. On top of that, he received the American Chemical Society Award in the Chemistry of Materials and other honors from professional organizations.

Several universities worldwide gave him honorary degrees. The University of Pennsylvania took considerable pride in his Nobel Prize, holding events and publishing features about his five-decade association with the university.

Legacy

Alan MacDiarmid's work in chemistry and materials science changed both fundamental research and technological development. The conducting polymer field he helped create has grown into a major research area with thousands of scientists worldwide and an enormous published literature.

The practical uses of conducting polymers have continued expanding since his death. Organic electronics including OLEDs, organic photovoltaics, and flexible devices now represent a multibillion-dollar industry. That industry traces its scientific roots to MacDiarmid, Heeger, and Shirakawa's late 1970s work. The core insight that organic materials could conduct electricity has influenced research in bioelectronics, energy harvesting, and environmental sensing.

In New Zealand, the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology preserves his legacy. A national Centre of Research Excellence headquartered at Victoria University of Wellington, the Institute supports research in advanced materials science and nanotechnology, reflecting MacDiarmid's commitment to research and education in his home country.

The University of Pennsylvania has honored his memory through various commemorations and through research programs he built. His former colleagues note that mentoring students and junior scientists was among his most important contributions. The researchers he trained now lead laboratories around the world.

His life story has become exemplary. From economic hardship in small-town New Zealand to the Nobel Prize podium in Stockholm. It shows how education and scientific curiosity transform lives. His career proved that major discoveries can emerge from unexpected partnerships and lucky encounters, and that researchers from any background can contribute at the highest level to human knowledge.

The National Academy of Sciences published a biographical memoir detailing his scientific contributions and personal history, ensuring that future generations of scientists have a comprehensive record of his life and work.