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Stanford Robert Ovshinsky (November 24, 1922 – October 17, 2012) was a prolific American inventor and scientist who had been granted well over 400 patents over fifty years, mostly in the areas of energy and information.〔Avery Cohn, "A Revolution Fueled by the Sun," ''Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies'' (Spring 2008): p. 22.〕 Many of his inventions have had wide ranging applications. Among the most prominent are: an environmentally friendly nickel-metal hydride battery, which has been widely used in laptop computers, digital cameras, cell phones, and electric and hybrid cars; flexible thin-film solar energy laminates and panels; flat screen liquid crystal displays; rewritable CD and DVD discs; hydrogen fuel cells; and nonvolatile phase-change memory.〔"The Edison of our Age?" ''The Economist'', December 2, 2006, pp. 33–34.〕〔 Ovshinsky opened the scientific field of amorphous and disordered materials in the course of his research in the 1940s and 50s in neurophysiology, neural disease, the nature of intelligence in mammals and machines, and cybernetics.〔"The Edison of our Age?" ''The Economist'', December 2, 2006〕〔Hellmut Fritzsche and Brian Schwartz, ''Stanford R. Ovshinsky: The Science and Technology of an American Genius'' (Singapore: World Scientific, 2008), pp. 3, 5, 51.〕 Amorphous silicon semiconductors have become the basis of many technologies and industries. Ovshinsky is also distinguished in being self-taught, without formal college or graduate training.〔 Throughout his life, his love for science and his social convictions were the primary engines for his inventive work.〔 In 1960, Ovshinsky and his soon-to-be second wife, Iris Dibner, founded Energy Conversion Laboratory in a storefront in Detroit, dedicating the laboratory to the solution of important societal problems using science and technology.〔 Focusing on the critical areas of energy and information, their new company, reconstituted in 1964 as Energy Conversion Devices (ECD), went on to become a forefront invention and development laboratory whose products have built new industries, many of them aimed at making fossil fuel obsolete. ECD continues (through joint ventures and license partners) to be a leading solar energy and battery production firm.〔John Fialka, "Power Surge: After Decades, A Solar Pioneer Sees Spark in Sales" ''Wall Street Journal,'' November 27, 2006; >"The Edison of our Age?"〕 Roughly a year after Iris Ovshinsky's death in August 2006, Ovshinsky left ECD and established a new company, Ovshinsky Innovation LLC, devoted to developing the scientific basis for highly innovative and revolutionary energy and information technologies. In October 2007 he married Rosa Young, a physicist who had worked at ECD on numerous energy technologies including a hydrogen-powered hybrid car and on Ovshinsky's vision of a hydrogen-based economy. ==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 Lithuanian 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.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stanford R. Ovshinsky」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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