Stanford R. Ovshinsky, a visionary Akron native who helped change the world with environmentally friendly electric battery, solar cell and hydrogen inventions and who held about 400 patents, died Wednesday. He was 89 and died at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a Detroit suburb, from complications with prostate cancer.
Mr. Ovshinsky was a self-taught scientist who graduated in 1941 from Buchtel and Hower Vocational high schools. He had no other formal training or schooling, yet went on to develop some of the world’s most widely used products.
The British magazine The Economist called him “the Edison of our age” and he played a prominent role in the documentary movie, Who Killed The Electric Car?
The high-power, nickel-hydride battery he developed has been used in more than a billion devices around the world, appearing in laptops, cell phones, cameras and in more products made by household names Samsung, Canon, Hyundai, Eveready, Toshiba and others. The battery technology is also used to power gas-electric hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius.
His inventions and discoveries made possible such things as solar-powered calculators.
“People thought I was out to change the world and I was,” he told the Akron Beacon Journal in 2001, when he was 78 years old and in town for his 60th high school reunion.
Mr. Ovshinsky was among 35 American inventors over the past century “who helped to shape the modern world” and as a result was profiled in the book, Inventing Modern America, his family said.
Time magazine named Mr. Ovshinsky a 1999 “Hero for the Planet.”
First patent at 24
After graduating from high school and working in industry in Northeast Ohio, he started his first business, a machine company, and at age 24 applied for his first patent, a center-drive lathe machine tool.
Mr. Ovshinsky and his late wife, Iris, in 1960 founded and ran Energy Conversion Devices, a car battery development company that also developed and applied his inventions to the fields of information and energy. (The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February and went into liquidation over the summer.)
He told the Beacon Journal in 2001 that in its early days, Energy Conversion Devices had more female vice presidents than male because he never wanted to ignore half the world’s intelligence.
The company also started a tradition that employees of all nationalities bring ethnic dishes to company gatherings. That ended disagreements over food at the events, he said.
“Nobody can tell me you can’t have peace in the world,” he said.
Mr. Ovshinsky told the Beacon Journal that his real contribution has been that he has “lived by principle my entire life.”
He created a machine that produced 9-mile-long sheets of thin solar energy panels intended to bring cheaper, cleaner power to homes and businesses.
Akron fuel tank plan
He and his late wife also were behind a plan in 2006 to develop and build fuel tanks for hydrogen-burning vehicles at the former Akron Steel Treating Co. site off South Broadway in Akron. The project never fully materialized.
His son, Harvey Ovshinsky, said his father was passionate about science and alternative energy, but also about civil rights and other social causes.
“Here was a man who spent his youth and his adulthood determined to change the world,” the younger Ovshinsky said. “That’s not a 9-to-5 job. My father worked tirelessly 24-7, even up until he got sick, to change the world and its attitude toward sustainable energy and alternate platforms for information.”
His father was self-taught, he said.
“It was the Akron Public Library where he got much of his early education,” the son said.
His father always kept a picture of the Akron Public Library in his home office. “He was proud of it. He was Akron through and through.”
As a young adult, Stan Ovshinsky went to public libraries at night to study physics. The science of “ovonics” was named after him; the field made possible many technological discoveries. Ovonics changes the electrical resistance and structure of materials in response to sunlight.
Mr. Ovshinsky was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received numerous honorary college degrees.
He was also committed to human and equal rights, and took part in labor, civil rights and peace movements, his son said.
“Civil rights or a ban on nuclear testing, he was passionate,” Harvey Ovshinsky said.
Along with his son Harvey, Stan Ovshinsky is survived by his wife, Rosa; his other children, Ben, Dale, Robin, Steven, Angela and Vicki; six grandchildren; and his brother, Herb.
There will be a private burial at the Workman’s Circle Cemetery in Akron. A virtual memorial is at www.forevermissed.com/stanford-r-ovshinsky/
Donations can be made to the ACLU of Michigan, 2966 Woodward Ave, Detroit MI 48201 and to the Ovshinsky Student Fund c/o Darlene Logan, Director of Development, the American Physical Society, 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740.
The Associated Press contributed to this story. Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com