10 Facts About Hideki Shirakawa

Hideki Shirakawa is a Japanese chemist, engineer, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tsukuba and Zhejiang University.

Hideki Shirakawa is best known for his discovery of conductive polymers.

Hideki Shirakawa was co-recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Alan MacDiarmid and Alan Heeger.

Hideki Shirakawa was born in Tokyo, Japan, the second son of a military doctor.

Hideki Shirakawa had one elder and one younger brother and sister.

In 1979, Hideki Shirakawa became an assistant professor in the University of Tsukuba; three years later, he advanced to a full professor.

Hideki Shirakawa became the first Japanese Nobel laureate who did not graduate from one of the National Seven Universities and the second Japanese chemistry Nobel laureate.

Creation of Conjugated Liquid Crystalline Polymers: Dr Hideki Shirakawa created self-oriented, conjugated liquid crystalline polymers by introducing liquid crystalline groups into the side chains of p-conjugated polymers such as polyacetylene.

Hideki Shirakawa macroscopically oriented the polymers with electric or magnetic fields and succeeded in having the molecules electric anisotropy.

Hideki Shirakawa is related to Naoko Takahashi, the women's marathon gold medalist of the 2000 Summer Olympics.