Photographs from the Papers of Alan G. MacDiarmid

Alan Graham MacDiarmid was born on April 14, 1927 in Masterton, New Zealand and studied chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry in 1953. Following postdoctoral studies at Cambridge University, MacDiarmid joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in 1955 and taught at the University for forty-five years. MacDiarmid is best known for his discovery and development of conductive polymers, i.e. plastic materials that conduct electricity, in collaboration with Japanese chemist Hideki Shirakawa and American physicist Alan Seeger. The discovery of conductive polymers significantly contributed to future developments in microelectronics and, in recognition of their groundbreaking work, the trio was joint recipients of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Over the course of his career, MacDiarmid was also elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences (United States) in 2002 and honored with various honorary doctorates and institutes, including the Alan MacDiarmid Institute of Innovation and Business in Brazil and the MacDiarmid Institute at Jilin University (China). MacDiarmid married Marian Mathieu, with whom he had four children, in 1954. Mathieu died in 1990 and MacDiarmid later married his second wife, Gayl Gentile, in 2005. Alan MacDiarmid died in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania on February 7, 2007.