Stanford Robert Ovshinsky, a prolific American inventor and scientist who had a special passion for renewable energy, passed away last week.
Mr. Ovshinsky had over 400 patents to his name, including nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries – still used in hybrid electric cars today – continuous web multi-junction flexible thin-film solar laminates and hydrogen fuel cells.
Referred to as the “Edison of our age”, Mr. Ovshinsky was an inspiration to high school and college dropouts everywhere – he was self-taught, without any formal college or graduate training.
In 1960, Ovshinsky founded Energy Conversion Laboratory in Detroit. Reconstituted in 1964 as Energy Conversion Devices (ECD), the firm went on to become a leading laboratory. Its inventions created new industries and ECD continued to be a leading solar energy and battery production firm.
However, in February this year, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary United Solar Ovonic LLC (better known as Uni-Solar) announced it had filed for bankruptcy. ECD/Uni-Solar was the world’s largest producer of flexible solar panels.
Ovshinsky had left ECD in 2006 and established a new company, Ovshinsky Innovation LLC, devoted to developing the scientific basis revolutionary energy and information technologies.
In his own words:
“I think about things very deeply, and I analyzed what I believed the problems of planet will be, and then, I try to have, and I have had, built new industries as solutions to what those problems are. Pollution, climate-change, gas, and wars over oil are desperate problems.”
According to a Wikipedia page on Mr.Ovshinsky, he had deep commitment to social values, including labor rights, civil rights, and civil liberties.
Stanford Ovshinsky was named a “Hero for the planet” by Time Magazine in 1999, and inducted into the U.S.-based Solar Energy Hall of Fame in 2005.
Image credit: Style Magazine/Glenn Triest
