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One of New Zealand's greatest scientists, a Nobel Prize winner, has died at 79.
Alan MacDiarmid was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000, along with Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa, for discovering a way to make plastics conduct electricity.
His breakthrough, made in the late 1970s, has led to cheap plastic batteries, light-emitting diodes used for giant TV screens and cellphones, and "smart windows" that let you see out but stop the heat of the sun's rays getting in on a hot day.
Prime Minister Helen Clark today expressed her sorrow at the news of MacDiarmid's death, and extended her condolences and sympathies to his family.
"I was honoured to present Alan with the Supreme Award at the 'World Class New Zealanders' awards ceremony in Auckland in March last year.
"He will be remembered for outstanding scientific achievements, for being a wonderful human being, for a tremendous generosity of spirit, for his pride of being a New Zealander, and for his contribution of service to our country throughout his life.
"Alan will be sorely missed," Clark said.
The founder of a New Zealand science dynasty, he once said that the frontiers of knowledge had to be pushed by people asking "childlike" questions.
Asked what it took to win a Nobel Prize, he said: "I reply that you have to ask simple, not complicated, childlike questions and work, work, work, work, work," he said.
Born in Masterton and raised in the Hutt Valley and Kerikeri, he developed an interest in chemistry aged ten from one of his father's old textbooks, and he taught himself from this book and from library books. He later worked as an assistant in the Chemistry Department of Victoria.
He won a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study for a PhD, which he received in 1953. He received another PhD, from the University of Cambridge, in 1955. He worked in the School of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews and later at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at Dallas.
Professor MacDiarmid maintained a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, though he mostly travelled around the world for speaking engagements that impressed upon listeners the value of globalising the effort of innovation in the 21st Century.
Victoria University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Pat Walsh, says Professor MacDiarmid's death is a great loss to New Zealand and to the international science community.
"The scientific community and his family have lost a great scientist and a great man."
Professor Walsh said Professor MacDiarmid was an active supporter of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology at Victoria University, which is named after him.
