Stanford R. Ovshinsky

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Stanford R. Ovshinsky : biography

November 24, 1922 – October 17, 2012

The company continued to develop electronic memory, batteries, and solar cells, reinvesting almost every penny of profit into the scientific study of a wide variety of problems, much of which later became the basis of lucrative industries, e.g., flat screen liquid crystal displays. In time, license fees to ECD began to grow, especially when amorphous silicon was used to make solar cells "by the mile," with an approach that originated from Ovshinsky’s non-silver photographic film work. It led to the bold approach of using the first continuous web photovoltaic machine, designed and built under Stan’s direction by Herb Ovshinsky and a small group in the machine division. Generations of machines later resulted in sufficient money to reach Ovshinsky’s objective of building a 30 megawatt machine, rather than a 5 megawatt machine. Despite considerable skepticism toward the machine, it is now being cloned very successfully by ECD in new plants. ECD also saw profits from the nickel metal hydride batteries, which were important for a time in laptop computers and continue to be important in hybrid gas-electric automobiles.

Ovshinsky Innovation LLC

On August 16, 2006, Iris Ovshinsky, Stan’s wife and partner of almost fifty years, died suddenly while swimming.Jeremy W. Peters, "Iris M. Ovshinsky, 79, Partner in Cleaner Auto Technology, is Dead," New York Times, September 5, 2006. A year later, Ovshinsky retired from ECD and launched a new company with Rosa Young, whom he later married. At Ovshinsky Innovation LLC, he continued his work on information and energy science, in strong relationships with colleagues and with industrial partners (for example, Ovonyx, which is developing phase-change semiconductor memory). Ovshinsky Innovation is currently focusing on a new kind of photovoltaic plant based on a new concept promising to lower the cost of photovoltaic energy sources below that of coal. This latter innovation would help realize his long-term goal over the last half-century to make fossil fuels obsolete while, at the same time, providing countless jobs in new industries. ECD is becoming recognized as the company that "developed solar roofing shingles in the 1980s," is making "the best available flexible thin film in the world," and is one of the first companies to work on building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) Jennifer Kho, "Energy Conversion Devices’ turnaround: Is BIPV finally ready to take off?" Renewable Energy World, January 16, 2009 and Dominique Browning, "Extreme Makeover: White House Edition," The Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2009, W1. Because of his independent and radical contributions to science, he has been compared with Einstein.Harley Shaiken, "The Einstein of alternative energy?" and Harley Shaiken, "Jumpstarting the Americas," Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies (Fall 2008): pp. 2-7. Because of his many inventions in digital memory, solar energy, battery technology, optical media, and solid hydrogen storage, and his hundreds of basic scientific patents, he has often been compared with Thomas Edison.Hellmut Fritzsche and Brian Schwartz, Stanford R. Ovshinsky: The Science and Technology of an American Genius (Singapore: World Scientific, 2008), p. 1. In the area of alternatives to fossil fuel, his pioneering work has caused many writers to refer to him as "the modern world’s most important energy visionary."Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (Hachette, NY: Twelve, 2007), p. 5.

Early life

Ovshinsky was born and grew up in the industrial town of Akron, Ohio, then at the center of the American rubber industry. The elder son of working-class Jewish immigrant parents who left Eastern Europe around 1905—Benjamin Ovshinsky from Lithuania and Bertha Munitz from what is now Belarus—Ovshinsky became active in social activities at an early age during the Great Depression.George S. Howard, Stan Ovshinsky and the Hydrogen Economy:…Creating a Better World (Notre Dame: Academic Publications, 2006), pp. 13, 15. His lifelong concern to better the lives of workers and minorities, as well as to advance culture and the interests of industry, derive largely from his father, who was a generous, liberal, and highly cultured activist. With his horse and wagon, and later his truck, Ben Ovshinsky made his living collecting scrap metal from factories and foundries. Based on his father’s example, and on teachings offered by the Akron Workmen’s Circle, an organization mainly of Jewish immigrants who believed in social justice, Stan Ovshinsky developed a deep commitment to social values, including labor rights, civil rights, and civil liberties.George S. Howard, Stan Ovshinsky and the Hydrogen Economy:…Creating a Better World (Notre Dame: Academic Publications, 2006), p. 14.