Stanford Ovshinsky
Stanford Ovshinsky, born on November 24, 1922, in Akron, Ohio, was a self-taught scientist and inventor known for his pioneering work in amorphous materials and their applications in energy and information technology. Despite not attending college, Ovshinsky developed a significant scientific career, beginning with inventions such as the high-speed center-driven lathe and the electric power steering system for vehicles. His research led to the discovery of the "Ovshinsky effect," enabling the creation of superconducting materials and revolutionary electronic and optical switches.
In 1960, he co-founded Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) with his second wife, Iris Dibner, where he focused on alternative energy sources, notably the hydrogen economy and nickel-metal hydride batteries, which became crucial for hybrid vehicles. His innovations extended to solar technologies, including thin-film solar cells and solar roofing materials. Over his lifetime, Ovshinsky received numerous awards and honors for his contributions, including the Toyota Prize for his battery invention.
His groundbreaking work in ovonics technology has had lasting impacts on various industries, from renewable energy solutions to advances in electronics, positioning him as a key figure in the movement toward cleaner energy and sustainable technology. Despite facing skepticism from the scientific community, his perseverance and creativity helped bridge the gap between visionary ideas and practical applications.
Stanford Ovshinsky
American machinist and scientist
- Born: November 24, 1922
- Birthplace: Akron, Ohio
- Died: October 17, 2012
Ovshinsky pioneered the field of disordered materials research known as ovonics and became a leading developer of hydrogen as an alternate fuel source. His work led to key developments in energy and information technology.
Primary fields: Automotive technology; mechanical engineering; physics
Primary invention: Ovonic switch
Early Life
Stanford Robert Ovshinsky (ov-SHIHN-skee) was born on November 24, 1922, in Akron, Ohio. He was the son of Lithuanian scrap dealer, Benjamin Ovshinsky, and his wife, Bertha Munitz. His parents instilled in him a passion for social causes. Although Ovshinsky was an avid reader with an especially keen interest in science, he never attended college. Instead, he acquired his scientific knowledge by haunting public libraries during his early life. After graduating from high school, he attended trade school to train as a machinist. He married his first wife, Norma Rifkin, and lived for a time in Arizona, where he worked in the tool room of the Goodyear plant in Litchfield. He then opened his own machine shop called the Stanford Roberts Company. In the early 1940’s, Ovshinsky invented a popular automated high-speed center-driven lathe known as the Benjamin Center Drive. He later sold his company to the New Britain Machine Company.
In 1951, Ovshinsky moved to Detroit, Michigan, and accepted the position of research director at Hupp Motorcar Company, an automotive parts manufacturer. At Hupp, he was involved in the development of electric power steering. He also developed an interest in human intelligence and its uses in developing machine intelligence as well as in neurophysiology. He formed a new company, named General Automation, in conjunction with his brother Herb. He also received a 1955 invitation from Wayne State University to participate in research on the mammalian cerebellum. His experiments with switches reminded him of research he had done on how neurons functioned within the human brain. He realized that the brain uses and stores energy without the benefit of an ordered structure, and he believed that science could engineer energy information systems that would work the same way. This work began his lifelong interest in what became known as amorphous, or disordered, materials, materials in which atoms are not linked together in a precise order.
Life’s Work
Ovshinsky first had to prove to an often skeptical scientific community that amorphous materials existed. He next learned how to produce thin layers of the materials at a relatively affordable cost. He started with elements such as sulfur, selenium, and tellurium, but later moved on to chalcogenides. At the same time, he continued his studies into the human brain and its relation to his other work. He designed a nerve cell model, which his brother Herb built, to further his understanding. Ovshinsky’s research resulted in the discovery of the “Ovshinsky effect,” by which thin, glassy films of amorphous materials become superconductors when low voltage is applied to them. He utilized this effect to produce electronic and optical switches that worked at high rates of speed, beginning with his first ovonic switch in 1957. In 1960, Ovshinsky cofounded Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) with his second wife, Iris Dibner. She had a B.A. in zoology, an M.S. in biology, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and was his lifelong business partner until her death in 2006.
Ovshinsky and his company were interested in using their ovonics technology to further the search for alternative energy sources to fossil fuels. Ovshinsky felt that hydrogen could both produce and store energy through what he termed the “hydrogen loop,” whereby water in a fuel cell is converted to hydrogen through solar-powered electrolysis and is then converted back to water, generating electricity in the process. He also achieved fame for his invention of the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery used to power portable electronic devices and hybrid electric cars, including the 1999 model of General Motors’ EV1. Ovshinsky utilized his methods to produce thin-film solar cells. He also designed a solar factory in Michigan featuring a shop floor with a flexible, durable, self-adhesive strip of power-generating solar material. In the 1980’s, he developed solar roofing materials.
In addition to energy storage and generation, Ovshinsky’s ovonics works had applications in the information technology (IT) field. Ovshinsky saw the two fields as compatible, calling information “encoded energy.” His patents have been used in computer processes and nonvolatile memory, rewriteable optical data storage discs, and silverless photography. His optical storage discs allow new data to be written over undeleted old data. In electronics, his work was utilized in the development of flat-panel liquid crystal display (LCD) and high-definition (HD) televisions. Japanese electronics companies licensed his technology in the 1980’s to produce digital video discs (DVDs).
Ovshinsky received adjunct professorships in engineering science and physics at Wayne State University and the University of Cincinnati, respectively. He has received a number of awards and professional honors over his lifetime. He is a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the 1966 Diesel Gold Medal from the German Association of Inventors, the 1988 Coors American Ingenuity Award, the 1991 Toyota Prize for his invention of the hybrid ovonic nickel-metal hydride battery, the 2005 Innovation Award for Energy and the Environment from The Economist magazine, several awards for his work in solar energy, and the International Association for Hydrogen Energy Sir William Grove Award.
In 1988, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) show Nova profiled Ovshinsky in a show titled “Japan’s American Genius.” His numerous publications have also received recognition, including the 1992 International Symposium for Electric Vehicles award for best article. After the 2006 death of his wife and business partner Iris, Ovshinsky retired from ECD and launched Ovshinsky Innovation, LLC, with his soon-to-be third wife, Rosa Young. He continued to work on photovoltaic energy projects for use in buildings as well as his idea for a cognitive computer with a memory similar to that of the human mind. He has received hundreds of patents over the course of his career.
Impact
Although the scientific community greeted many of the self-educated Ovshinsky’s ideas with skepticism, he persevered in demonstrating that they had key research and commercial applications and that he could take them from visions to inventions. The new physics field of amorphous materials that he pioneered bears his name, ovonics, a term in common usage. A variety of past and present inventions rely on ovonics technology and his patents, and scientists are studying ovonics materials in a variety of fields, including their use as superconducting materials that allow researchers to work at much higher temperatures than that of conventional superconducting materials. Due to the depth and breadth of his ideas and inventions, he has repeatedly drawn comparisons to renowned scientist Albert Einstein and renowned inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Through his company, he has worked with a number of prominent scientists, including Hellmut Fritzsche, Morrel Cohen, David Adler, Sir Neville Mott, John Bardeen, Arthur Bienenstock, Kenichi Fukui, William Lipscomb, and Linus Pauling.
Ovshinsky’s work on the “hydrogen economy” as a potential source for creating and storing energy put him in the forefront of the movement to develop cleaner, more renewable energy sources than fossil fuels and to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil imported from regions such as the Middle East. For example, hydrogen fuel cells that rely on his hydrogen-loop technology are a potential replacement for the standard internal combustion engine. Ovshinsky emphasizes the social as well as commercial benefits of clean energy. His work has helped the effort to make the future of electric cars, solar panels, and other green technology more realistic and affordable on a mass scale. For example, he proved that electric cars could travel adequate distances without recharging while driving at normal highway speeds. His company made photovoltaic cells that were used on the Mir space station to generate electricity from sunlight.
Although Ovshinsky’s company never achieved steady profitability, his technological developments are finding their way into the commercial market on a greater scale through his company’s partnerships with a number of major corporations, including Intel, Samsung, General Electric, and Chevron. For example, ECD partnered with Sharp and Standard Oil to mass-produce solar energy cells made of ovonic materials. Originally used to power calculators, they may someday be cost-effective enough to power homes and businesses.
Bibliography
“The Edison of Our Age?” The Economist, December 2, 2006, 34. Provides an overview of Ovshinsky’s motivations and career development, including his key inventions. Also examines how those inventions could affect the future in areas such as energy development, solar power, and automotive technology.
Hoffmann, Peter. Tomorrow’s Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. Provides an in-depth exploration of the development of hydrogen products as a nonpolluting energy source and their commercial applications, including an examination of their benefits and detriments.
Hornblower, Margot. “Heroes For the Planet/Design.” Time, February 22, 1999, 80. Covers Ovshinsky’s background and an overview of his inventions that have implications for the automobile industry. Focuses on his patented new battery and its use to power electric cars.
Howard, George S., and Theodore M. Hesburgh. Stan Ovshinsky and the Hydrogen Economy: Creating a Better World. Notre Dame, Ind.: Academic, 2006. Explores Ovshinsky’s proposal of the hydrogen loop as part of his work in the development of hydrogen as a clean, renewable energy source. Also explores the development of his company Energy Conversion Devices.
Ovshinsky, Stanford, David Adler, Brian B. Schwatrz, and M. Silver. Disordered Materials: Science and Technology—Selected Papers. New York: Plenum Press, 1991. Collection of papers written or coauthored by Ovshinsky between 1968 and 1988. Covers the topics of order-disorder models, amorphous semiconductors, and amorphous substances. Bibliography.
Ovshinsky, Stanford, Hellmut Fritzsche, and Brian B. Schwartz. Stanford R. Ovshinsky: The Science and Technology of an American Genius. Hackensack, N.J.: World Scientific, 2008. Colleagues explore Ovshinsky’s work in the development of amorphous semiconductors, solar energy, photovoltaic power generation, and hydrogen as fuel. Bibliography.
Pernick, Ron, and Clint Wilder. The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Explains the development of the mainstream green technology movement in which Ovshinsky has played a key role. Includes profiles of leading companies in the field and green investment strategies for companies and individuals.