#whittingham

This scene makes me think Belos struggles to control his rage, and that it’s associated with his curse. This gives support to the idea that he is in fact Whittingham.  Belos’s thorn shooting right past Hunter’s scar is just enough for me to think the creators are trying to confirm that’s how Hunter got his scar.

Forging the path to a rechargeable world today earned three scientists the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Explainer: The Nobel Prize

Alessandro Volta demonstrated the first electric battery in 1800. Since then, scientists have been working to build better ones. Today’s winners were honored for pioneering the lithium-ion battery. Lightweight and rechargeable, these batteries can be found in everything from portable electronics to electric cars and bicycles. They also provide a way to store energy from renewable energy sources (such as sunlight and wind).

The winners include John B. Goodenough at the University of Texas at Austin. At 97, he is the oldest person to ever receive a Nobel. The other winners are M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino. Whittingham works at Binghamton University in New York. Yoshiro works in Japan at Asahi Kasei Corporation in Tokyo and Meijo University in Nagoya.

All three will receive a medal and together split the prize of 9 million Swedish kronor (about $900,000).

Chemist Olof Ramström works at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He also is a member of the 2019 Nobel Committee for chemistry. He spoke during this morning’s announcement of the prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden. “This battery has had a dramatic impact on our society,” he said. “It’s clear that the discoveries of our three laureates really made this possible.”

The path to a better battery

Batteries store electrical energy as chemical energy. All have three main parts. These start with two electrodes: an anode (AN-oad), or negative electrode, and cathode (KATH-oad), or positive one. Separating the two is an electrolyte. This chemical helps electrically charged ions move inside the battery.

Explainer: How batteries and capacitors differ

Chemical reactions in the anode release electrons. They then travel along a circuit to the cathode. This forms a current.

In the 1970s, Whittingham began experimenting with lithium for his anode. It did not weigh much and readily released electrons and lithium ions. To make a rechargeable battery, he chose titanium disulfide for the cathode. Made of many layers, that cathode stored lithium ions released from the anode. While working with the energy company Exxon, Whittingham used this design for the first lithium battery. It could supply 2 volts.

M. Stanley Whittingham devised the first lithium-based rechargeable battery (illustrated), using a cathode of titanium disulfide. When this 2-volt battery was used, electrons from the metallic lithium anode flowed through a circuit to power an external device. Positive lithium ions then flowed from the cathode through the electrolyte to the anode. There, the positive ions could snuggle between layers of the titanium disulfide. Recharging the battery forced these lithium ions to flow back across the battery to their starting positions in the anode. CREDIT: ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Goodenough sought to improve on Whittingham’s design over the next decade. His cathode would be made from cobalt oxide. It could sandwich even more ions within its layers. Goodenough’s innovation doubled voltage to 4 volts. (That’s about what it takes to power a modern smartphone.)

John Goodenough improved on M. Stanley Whittingham’s battery design. He used a cobalt oxide cathode, which doubled the voltage. CREDIT: ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

In 1985, Yoshino explored creating an anode from a by-product of oil production. Known as petroleum coke, it was finely layered. And while not made of lithium, it could store lithium ions when charged. Yoshino paired it with Goodenough’s cathode. The result was a safer, more durable, 4-volt rechargeable battery. That design was used for the first lithium-ion batteries to hit store shelves. That was in 1991.

Akira Yoshino replaced the lithium metal anode with a safer petroleum coke material. This paved the way for the powerful lithium-ion batteries now used in many common devices. CREDIT: ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

These early devices offered about twice as much energy as the next best batteries. What’s more, they were not one-and-done batteries. These could be drawn down and then recharged hundreds of times before their performance suffered.

Appreciation for the scientists and their work

The Nobel Prize announcement is “really thrilling for the battery community,” says Kelsey Hatzell. She works at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. “Stan and Akira and John’s work is so significant.… You can’t imagine going through your daily life without using half a dozen different devices that use lithium-ion batteries.”

At a news conference, Goodenough said “I’m extremely happy that my work has helped people’s ability to communicate.” When asked if he had expected to win, Goodenough replied: “I didn’t expect anything!” He said he’d donate his share of the winnings “to my university to support people who work there.”

Goodenough may not have expected to win, but others had long considered him a shoo-in. “People in the electrochemistry field … have put him number one on our [Nobel prediction] lists for years and years and years and years,” says Amanda Morris. She’s a chemist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

“John is an amazing scientist, with incredible intuition, and a great person,” adds Yang Shao-Horn. She’s a chemist and engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge. She notes that Goodenough “has inspired generations of scientists and engineers with his positive attitude, honesty and boundless curiosity.”

Lithium-ion batteries now perform much better than those in 1991. Over the past two decades or more, researchers have been working very hard. And it’s paid off. The energy available from these batteries “has doubled — even tripled, in some cases, and the cycle life has improved greatly,” says Shao-Horn. Today, you can recharge these batteries thousands of times. They also have gotten safer and less costly.

Kyle BonaguraDec 12, 2025, 04:35 PM ET Close Covers college football. Joined ESPN in 2014. Attended Washington State University. Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham, the winningest coach in program history and one of the longest-tenured coaches in the FBS, will step down following the Utes’ appearance in the Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 31, the school announced Friday. Whittingham, who has been with…

This week, I identified six of seven people in my photo set: Doris Willett, Hope Williams, Marion Whittier (Née Simpson), Beverly Orne), Marion Whittingham, and Donald Whittingham.

Ethel Wight Collection – Part 99 By Don Taylor This week, for Photo Friday, I identify the people in five more envelopes from the Ethel Wight Studio Collection[i]. The envelopes contain the names who paid for the photos, not necessarily of the individual portrayed in the image. As such, it is vital to analyze the pictures and information to identify the individual therein.[ii] Ultimately, my goal…