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Alan MacDiarmidONZ FRS
Alan MacDiarmid in Beijing, China, 2005
Born	Alan Graham MacDiarmid 14 April 1927 Masterton, New Zealand
Died	7 February 2007 (aged 79) Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Nationality	New Zealand, United States
Alma mater	Victoria University of Wellington (BSc) University of Wisconsin–Madison (MS) University of Cambridge (PhD)
Awards	The Francis J. Clamer Medal (1993) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2000) William H. Nichols Medal (2002) Fellow of the Royal Society (2003) NAS Member (2002) Friendship Award (2004)
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Pennsylvania University of St Andrews University of Texas at Dallas
Thesis	The chemistry of some new derivatives of the silyl radical (1955)

Alan Graham MacDiarmid, ONZ FRS (14 April 1927 – 7 February 2007) was a New Zealand-born American chemist, and one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000.

Early life and education

MacDiarmid was born in Masterton, New Zealand, as one of five children – three brothers and two sisters. His family was relatively poor, and the Great Depression made life difficult in Masterton, due to which his family shifted to Lower Hutt, a few miles from Wellington, New Zealand. At around age ten, he developed an interest in chemistry from one of his father's old textbooks, and he taught himself from this book and from library books.

MacDiarmid was educated at Hutt Valley High School and Victoria University of Wellington.

In 1943, MacDiarmid passed the University of New Zealand's University Entrance Exam and its Medical Preliminary Exam. He then took up a part-time job as a "lab boy" or janitor at Victoria University of Wellington during his studies for a BSc degree, which he completed in 1947. He was then appointed demonstrator in the undergraduate laboratories. After completing an MSc in chemistry from the same university, he worked as an assistant in its chemistry department. It was here that he had his first publication in 1949, in the scientific journal Nature. He graduated in 1951 with first class honours, and won a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He majored in inorganic chemistry, receiving his M.S. degree in 1952 and his PhD in 1953. He then won a Shell Graduate Scholarship, which enabled him to go to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he completed a second PhD in 1955.

Career and research

MacDiarmid worked in the School of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews in Scotland for a year as a member of the junior faculty. He then took a faculty position in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, where he became a full professor in 1964. MacDiarmid spent the greater part of his career on the chemistry faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked for 45 years. The first twenty years of his research there focused on silicon chemistry. He was appointed Blanchard Professor of Chemistry in 1988.

In 2002 MacDiarmid also joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Dallas.

Conductive polymers

His best-known research was the discovery and development of conductive polymers—plastic materials that conduct electricity. He collaborated with the Japanese chemist Hideki Shirakawa and the American physicist Alan Heeger in this research and published the first results in 1977. The three of them shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.

The Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery that plastics can, after certain modifications, be made electrically conductive. The work progressed to yield important practical applications. Conductive plastics can be used for anti-static substances for photographic film and 'smart' windows that can exclude sunlight. Semi-conductive polymers have been applied in light-emitting diodes, solar cells and displays in mobile telephones. Future developments in molecular electronics are predicted to dramatically increase the speed while reducing the size of computers.

MacDiarmid also travelled around the world for speaking engagements that impressed upon listeners the value of globalising the effort of innovation in the 21st century. In one of his last courses, in 2001, MacDiarmid elected to lead a small seminar of incoming freshmen about his research activities. Overall, his name is on over 600 published papers and 20 patents.

Selected publications

• Chiang, C.K.; Druy, M.A.; Gau, S.C.; Heeger, A.J.; Louis, E.J.; MacDiarmid, A.G.; Park, Y.W.; Shirakawa, H., "Synthesis of Highly Conducting Films of Derivatives of Polyacetylene, (CH)x," J. Am. Chem. Soc., 100, 1013 (1978).
• Heeger, A. J.; MacDiarmid, A. G., Polyacetylene, (CH){sub x}, as an Emerging Material for Solar Cell Applications. Final Technical Report, March 19, 1979 – March 18, 1980, University of Pennsylvania (June 1980).
• MacDiarmid, A. G., Energy Systems Based on Polyacetylene: Rechargeable Batteries and Schottky Barrier Solar Cells. Final Report, March 1, 1981 – February 29, 1984, University of Pennsylvania (February 1984).
• The Workshop on Conductive Polymers: Final Report, U.S. Department of Energy Division of Materials Sciences, Brookhaven National Laboratory (October 1985).
• Chiang, J.-C., and MacDiarmid, A.G., "Polyaniline': Protonic Acid Doping of the Emeraldine Form to the Metallic Regime," Synth. Met., 13, 193 (1986).
• MacDiarmid, A.G.; Chiang, J.-C.; Richter, A.F.; Epstein, A.J., "Polyaniline: A New Concept in Conducting Polymers," Synth. Met., 18, 285 (1987).
• MacDiarmid, A.G., Yang, L.S., Huang, W.-S., and Humphrey, B.D., "Polyaniline: Electrochemistry and Application to Rechargeable Batteries". Synth. Met., 18, 393 (1987).
• Kaner, R.B.; MacDiarmid, A.G., "Plastics That Conduct Electricity," Scientific American, 106 (February 1988).
• MacDiarmid, A.G.; Epstein, A.J., " 'Synthetic Metals': A Novel Role for Organic Polymers," Macromol. Chem., 51, 11 (1991).
• MacDiarmid, A.G.; Epstein, A.J., "Science and Technology of Conducting Polymers," in Frontiers of Polymer Research, P.N. Prasad and J.K. Nigam, Eds., Plenum Press, New York, 1991, p. 259.
• Wang, Z.H.; Li, C.; Scherr, E.M.; MacDiarmid, A.G.; Epstein, A.J., "Three Dimensionality of 'Metallic' States in Conducting Polymers: Polyaniline," Phys. Rev. Lett., 66, 1745 (1991).
• MacDiarmid, A.J.; Epstein, A.J., "The Concept of Secondary Doping as Applied to Polyaniline," Synth. Met., 65, 103 (1994).
• MacDiarmid, A.G., Zhou, Y., Feng, J., Furst, G.T., and Shedlow, A.M., "Isomers and Isomerization Processes in Poly-Anilines," Proc. ANTEC '99, Soc. Plastics Engr., 2, 1563 (1999).
• MacDiarmid, A.G., Norris, I.D., Jones, J.W.E., El-Sherif, M.A., Yuan, J., Han, B. and Ko, F.K., "Polyaniline Based Chemical Transducers with Sub-micron Dimensions," Polymeric Mat. Sci. & Eng., 83, 544 (2000).
• Norris, I.D., Shaker, M.M., Ko, F.K., and MacDiarmid, A.G., "Electrostatic Fabrication of Ultrafine Conducting Fibers: Polyaniline/Polyethylene Oxide Blends," Synth. Met., 114, 2 (2000).
• MacDiarmid, A.G., Jones, J.W.E., Norris, I.D., Gao, J., Johnson, J.A.T., Pinto, N.J., Hone, J., Han, B., Ko, F.K., Okuzaki, H., and Llaguno, M., "Electrostatically-Generated Nanofibers of Electronic Polymers," Synth. Met., 119, 27–30 (2001).
• Shimano, J.Y., and MacDiarmid, A.G., "Phase Segregation in Polyaniline: A Dynamic Block Copolymer," Synth. Met., 119, 365–366 (2001).
• Wang, P.C., and MacDiarmid, A.G., "Dependency of Properties of In Situ Deposited Polypyrrole Films on Dopant Anion and Substrate Surface," Synth. Met., 119, 267–268 (2001).
• Hohnholz, D., and MacDiarmid, A.G., "Line Patterning of Conducting Polymers: New Horizons for Inexpensive, Disposable Electronic Devices," Synth. Met., 121, 1327–1328 (2001).
• Premvardhan, L., Peteanu, L.A., Wang, P.-C., and MacDiarmid, A.G., "Electronic Properties of the Conducting Form of Polyaniline from Electroabsorption Measurements," Synth. Met., 116, 157–161 (2001).
• MacDiarmid, A.G. "Twenty-five Years of Conducting Polymers". Chem. Comm., 1–4 (2003).
• Tanner, D.B.; Doll, G.L.; Rao, A.M.; Eklund, P.C.; Arbuckle, G.A.; MacDiarmid, A.G. "Optical properties of potassium-doped polyacetylene". Synth. Met., 141, 75–79 (2004).
• Hohnholz, D.; Okuzaki,H.; MacDiarmid, A.G. "Plastic electronic devices through line patterning of conducting polymers". Adv. Funct. Mater., 15, 51–56 (2005).
• Venancio, E.C; Wang, P-C.; MacDiarmid, A.G. "The Azanes: A Class of Material Incorporating Nano/Micro Self-Assembled Hollow Spheres Obtained By Aqueous Oxidative Polymerization of Aniline". Synth. Met., 156, 357 (2006).
• MacDiarmid, A.G.; Venancio, E.C. "Agrienergy (Agriculture/Energy): What Does the Future Hold?”. Experimental Biology and Medicine., 231, 1212 (2006).

Awards and honours

MacDiarmid won numerous awards and honours including:

• Victoria University of Wellington gave MacDiarmid an honorary doctorate in 1999 and in 2001 created the Alan MacDiarmid Chair in Physical Chemistry. The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology and the Alan MacDiarmid building, opened in May 2010, at the university are named after him.
• Awarded the 1999 American Chemical Society Award in Materials Chemistry.
• In 2000 the Royal Society of New Zealand awarded him its top honour, the Rutherford Medal.
• In 2002, he was elected a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
• In the 2002 New Year Honours, MacDiarmid was appointed to the Order of New Zealand, which is the highest honour the country awards.
• MacDiarmid was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2003
• In 2004, he received the Friendship Award, the highest honour of the People's Republic of China for foreign experts.
• The Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas was named after him posthumously in 2007.
• The Alan G. MacDiarmid Institute at Jilin University in China was named after him since 2001.
• MacDiarmid Place in Lower Hutt, built in 2013 on the grounds of the closed Waiwhetu School of which he was a pupil, is named after Alan MacDiarmid.

Personal life

Towards the end of his life, MacDiarmid was ill with myelodysplastic syndrome. In early February 2007 he was planning to travel back to New Zealand, when he fell down the stairs in his home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and died on 7 February 2007. He is buried at Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill.

MacDiarmid's first wife, Marian Mathieu, who he had married in 1954, died in 1990. He is survived by four children: Heather McConnell, Dawn Hazelett, Duncan MacDiarmid and Gail Williams, from their marriage and nine grandchildren: Dr. Sean McConnell, Dr. Ryan McConnell, Rebecca McConnell, Dr. Clayton Hazelett, Wesley Hazelett, Langston MacDiarmid, Aubree Williams, Austin Williams and George Williams. MacDiarmid was also survived by his second wife, Gayl Gentile, whom he married in 2005; she died in 2014.

MacDiarmid was a first cousin of New Zealand expatriate painter Douglas MacDiarmid. The year after Alan received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Douglas painted a portrait Archived 11 November 2021 at the Wayback Machine of his cousin for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.

MacDiarmid was also active as a naturist and nudist, and considered himself a sun-worshipper and keen waterskier.

References

1. ^ "Fellowship of the Royal Society 1660–2015". Royal Society. Archived from the original on 15 October 2015.
2. Holmes, Andrew B.; Klein, Michael L.; Baughman, Ray H. (2023). "Alan Graham MacDiarmid. 14 April 1927—7 February 2007". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 74: 259–282. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2022.0045. S2CID 256630316.
3. Holmes, Andrew (2007). "Obituary: Alan Graham MacDiarmid (1927–2007) Pioneer of conducting polymers, and proud Antipodean". Nature. 446 (7134): 390. doi:10.1038/446390a. PMID 17377574. S2CID 4400048.
4. "Alan G. MacDiarmid". Memorial Tributes: National Academy of Engineering. 15: 296. 2011.
5. Center for Oral History. "Alan G. MacDiarmid". Science History Institute.
6. Mody, Cyrus (19 December 2005). Alan G. MacDiarmid, Transcript of an Interview Conducted by Cyrus Mody at University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 19 December 2005 (PDF). Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Foundation.
7. ^ "Alan G. MacDiarmid – Autobiography". Nobelprize.org. Archived from the original on 10 July 2007. Retrieved 3 July 2007.
8. ^ "Alan MacDiarmid – PLASTIC FANTASTIC". NZEdge.com. Archived from the original on 1 July 2007. Retrieved 3 July 2007.
9. MacDiarmid, Alan Graham (1955). The chemistry of some new derivatives of the silyl radical (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
10. Bellama, J.M.; MacDiarmid, A.G. (1969). "Synthesis and proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of silylmethyl halides". Journal of Organometallic Chemistry. 18 (2): 275–284. doi:10.1016/S0022-328X(00)85395-4. S2CID 95219241.
11. "Chairs for Five SAS Faculty". Almanac (University of Pennsylvania newsletter), 35(1), 12 July 1988.
12. ^ Chang, Kenneth (8 February 2007). "Alan MacDiarmid, 79, Who Won Nobel for Work With Plastic, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
13. Shirakawa, Hideki; Louis, Edwin J.; MacDiarmid, Alan G.; Chiang, Chwan K.; Heeger, Alan J. (1977). "Synthesis of electrically conducting organic polymers: Halogen derivatives of polyacetylene, (CH) x" (PDF). Journal of the Chemical Society, Chemical Communications (16): 578. doi:10.1039/C39770000578. Archived from the original on 25 September 2017. Retrieved 29 April 2018.
14. "The Long and Winding Road to the Nobel Prize for Alan MacDiarmid". Almanac (University of Pennsylvania newsletter), 47(8), 17 October 2000.
15. Sandy Smith, "Alan MacDiarmid". The Penn Current, 26 October 2000. Archived 31 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine
16. Joan P. Capuzzi Giresi, "The Boy Chemist at 75." Pennsylvania Gazette, March 2002.
17. "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2000: Alan Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid, Hideki Shirakawa".
18. ^ Kent Atkinson of NZPA (9 February 2007). "The Nobel-prize winning naturist – Alan MacDiarmid remembered". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
19. "Chemistry.org". Archived from the original on 4 July 2007. Retrieved 14 July 2007.
20. "New Year honours list 2002". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 31 December 2001. Retrieved 3 August 2019.
21. Friendship Award awards friends, People's Daily Online, 30 September 2004
22. "Nobel-Winner MacDiarmid Dies". Pennsylvania Gazette, March 2007.
23. "NZ Nobel Prize winner dies". NZPA. 8 February 2007. Archived from the original on 22 September 2007. Retrieved 8 February 2007.
24. "Alan MacDiarmid". The New Zealand Portrait Gallery. Archived from the original on 4 February 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
25. "Kiwi Naturist Nobel Winner Remembered". NaturistMusings. 16 February 2007. Archived from the original on 11 November 2021. Retrieved 9 January 2022.
26. My Nude Life Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine

External links

• Alan MacDiarmid on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture Synthetic Metals": A Novel Role for Organic Polymers
• McDiarmid Institute Web Site
• Alan Graham MacDiarmid biography from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
• MacDiarmid's Page at The University of Texas at Dallas
• MacDiarmid's page at the University of Pennsylvania
• New Zealand Edge biography Archived 1 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine
• List of MacDiarmid's publications
• Interview with Alan MacDiarmid Freeview video provided by the Vega Science Trust.
• Alan MacDiarmid Image Collection Finding Aid. Retrieved 1 March 2018. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
• Center for Oral History. "Alan G. MacDiarmid". Science History Institute.
• Mody, Cyrus (19 December 2005). Alan G. MacDiarmid, Transcript of an Interview Conducted by Cyrus Mody at University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 19 December 2005 (PDF). Philadelphia, PA: Chemical Heritage Foundation.

v t e Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1901–1925	1901: Jacobus van 't Hoff 1902: Emil Fischer 1903: Svante Arrhenius 1904: William Ramsay 1905: Adolf von Baeyer 1906: Henri Moissan 1907: Eduard Buchner 1908: Ernest Rutherford 1909: Wilhelm Ostwald 1910: Otto Wallach 1911: Marie Curie 1912: Victor Grignard / Paul Sabatier 1913: Alfred Werner 1914: Theodore Richards 1915: Richard Willstätter 1916 1917 1918: Fritz Haber 1919 1920: Walther Nernst 1921: Frederick Soddy 1922: Francis Aston 1923: Fritz Pregl 1924 1925: Richard Zsigmondy
1926–1950	1926: Theodor Svedberg 1927: Heinrich Wieland 1928: Adolf Windaus 1929: Arthur Harden / Hans von Euler-Chelpin 1930: Hans Fischer 1931: Carl Bosch / Friedrich Bergius 1932: Irving Langmuir 1933 1934: Harold Urey 1935: Frédéric Joliot-Curie / Irène Joliot-Curie 1936: Peter Debye 1937: Norman Haworth / Paul Karrer 1938: Richard Kuhn 1939: Adolf Butenandt / Leopold Ružička 1940 1941 1942 1943: George de Hevesy 1944: Otto Hahn 1945: Artturi Virtanen 1946: James B. Sumner / John Northrop / Wendell Meredith Stanley 1947: Robert Robinson 1948: Arne Tiselius 1949: William Giauque 1950: Otto Diels / Kurt Alder
1951–1975	1951: Edwin McMillan / Glenn T. Seaborg 1952: Archer Martin / Richard Synge 1953: Hermann Staudinger 1954: Linus Pauling 1955: Vincent du Vigneaud 1956: Cyril Hinshelwood / Nikolay Semyonov 1957: Alexander Todd 1958: Frederick Sanger 1959: Jaroslav Heyrovský 1960: Willard Libby 1961: Melvin Calvin 1962: Max Perutz / John Kendrew 1963: Karl Ziegler / Giulio Natta 1964: Dorothy Hodgkin 1965: Robert Woodward 1966: Robert S. Mulliken 1967: Manfred Eigen / Ronald Norrish / George Porter 1968: Lars Onsager 1969: Derek Barton / Odd Hassel 1970: Luis Federico Leloir 1971: Gerhard Herzberg 1972: Christian B. Anfinsen / Stanford Moore / William Stein 1973: Ernst Otto Fischer / Geoffrey Wilkinson 1974: Paul Flory 1975: John Cornforth / Vladimir Prelog
1976–2000	1976: William Lipscomb 1977: Ilya Prigogine 1978: Peter D. Mitchell 1979: Herbert C. Brown / Georg Wittig 1980: Paul Berg / Walter Gilbert / Frederick Sanger 1981: Kenichi Fukui / Roald Hoffmann 1982: Aaron Klug 1983: Henry Taube 1984: Robert Merrifield 1985: Herbert A. Hauptman / Jerome Karle 1986: Dudley R. Herschbach / Yuan T. Lee / John Polanyi 1987: Donald J. Cram / Jean-Marie Lehn / Charles J. Pedersen 1988: Johann Deisenhofer / Robert Huber / Hartmut Michel 1989: Sidney Altman / Thomas Cech 1990: Elias Corey 1991: Richard R. Ernst 1992: Rudolph A. Marcus 1993: Kary Mullis / Michael Smith 1994: George Olah 1995: Paul J. Crutzen / Mario Molina / F. Sherwood Rowland 1996: Robert Curl / Harold Kroto / Richard Smalley 1997: Paul D. Boyer / John E. Walker / Jens Christian Skou 1998: Walter Kohn / John Pople 1999: Ahmed Zewail 2000: Alan J. Heeger / Alan MacDiarmid / Hideki Shirakawa
2001–present	2001: William Knowles / Ryoji Noyori / K. Barry Sharpless 2002: John B. Fenn / Koichi Tanaka / Kurt Wüthrich 2003: Peter Agre / Roderick MacKinnon 2004: Aaron Ciechanover / Avram Hershko / Irwin Rose 2005: Robert H. Grubbs / Richard R. Schrock / Yves Chauvin 2006: Roger D. Kornberg 2007: Gerhard Ertl 2008: Osamu Shimomura / Martin Chalfie / Roger Y. Tsien 2009: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan / Thomas A. Steitz / Ada E. Yonath 2010: Richard F. Heck / Akira Suzuki / Ei-ichi Negishi 2011: Dan Shechtman 2012: Robert Lefkowitz / Brian Kobilka 2013: Martin Karplus / Michael Levitt / Arieh Warshel 2014: Eric Betzig / Stefan Hell / William E. Moerner 2015: Tomas Lindahl / Paul L. Modrich / Aziz Sancar 2016: Jean-Pierre Sauvage / Fraser Stoddart / Ben Feringa 2017: Jacques Dubochet / Joachim Frank / Richard Henderson 2018: Frances Arnold / Gregory Winter / George Smith 2019: John B. Goodenough / M. Stanley Whittingham / Akira Yoshino 2020: Emmanuelle Charpentier / Jennifer Doudna 2021: David MacMillan / Benjamin List 2022: Carolyn R. Bertozzi / Morten P. Meldal / Karl Barry Sharpless 2023: Moungi G. Bawendi / Louis E. Brus / Alexei I. Ekimov 2024: David Baker / Demis Hassabis / John M. Jumper

• 1927 births
• 2007 deaths
• Deaths from myelodysplastic syndrome
• People from Masterton
• Academics of the University of St Andrews
• Alumni of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
• Burials at Arlington Cemetery (Pennsylvania)
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Members of the Order of New Zealand
• New Zealand chemists
• New Zealand emigrants to the United States
• New Zealand Nobel laureates
• Nobel laureates in Chemistry
• Polymer scientists and engineers
• University of Pennsylvania faculty
• University of Texas at Dallas faculty
• University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
• Victoria University of Wellington alumni
• New Zealand fellows of the Royal Society
• Accidental deaths from falls
• Accidental deaths in Pennsylvania
• Recipients of the Rutherford Medal
• People educated at Hutt Valley High School
• People from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania
• Social nudity advocates