Alan Graham MacDiarmid, who made important contributions to physics and chemistry, died in his home in Philadelphia on 7 February 2007. Despite being in poor health, he was about to depart on a long and arduous trip to New Zealand, his homeland, to see family and to visit the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, the scientific organization created in his name. Weakened by myeloplastic syndrome, a leukemia-like disease, Alan fell down a flight of stairs just moments before the planned departure.
Born in Masterton, New Zealand, on 14 April 1927, Alan worked part-time and attended classes at Victoria University College, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry. He earned two PhDs in inorganic chemistry, one at the University of Wisconsin in 1953 and the second at Cambridge University in England in 1955. After a brief appointment at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, he became a chemistry professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Alan, Hideki Shirakawa, and I were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 for the discovery of conducting polymers. Three earlier Nobel Prizes in Chemistry had been presented for discoveries in polymer science: to Hermann Staudinger in 1953, to Karl Zeigler and Giulio Natta in 1963, and to Paul Flory in 1974. Their discoveries are associated with three generations of polymers: natural ones, such as leather, spider webs, and silk, that have been used by our ancestors for thousands of years; synthetic fibers; and the structural plastics that are so important in our society today.
None of the first three generations, however, is interesting in relation to electronic materials. They are insulators. The materials that Alan, Shirakawa, and I discovered in the late 1970s brought electronic function into the area of polymer science. Conducting polymers are the fourth generation of polymeric materials; they are electronically active and have the properties of semiconductors and metals.
Now, three decades later, our discovery is well known and often used as a highly successful example of the importance of interdisciplinary research. When we started this work, however, the basic concepts that define semiconducting and metallic polymers were not understood. Alan and I had previously worked on poly(sulfur-nitride), a metallic polymer. In 1976 the creation of this truly interdisciplinary collaboration between an inorganic chemist (Alan), a physicist (me), and a polymer scientist (Shirakawa) was bold and risky.
Alan was well aware of the risks. Before moving from inorganic chemistry into conducting polymers, he had a successful career that focused on the chemistry of silicon. But new directions in interdisciplinary science are where great discoveries can be found. Alan understood that opportunity, and he embraced our effort with enthusiasm, vigor, and dedication.
I remember many stories, often told, of those exciting early days. Alan pushed hard. His graduate students would come to me not infrequently and complain of having been subject to a “Big Mac attack”; Alan would have an idea and would not be patient in seeing that idea become experimental fact. On one occasion, he and I were having lunch at a cafe on the University of Pennsylvania campus. I complained that although we had spectacular results on doping polyacetylene with various acceptors, the changes in electrical conductivity—by factors exceeding 109—occurred on a time scale that was too short to enable a detailed study of the insulator-to-metal transition. By the time we had finished lunch, Alan had suggested using electrochemistry to control the doping, that is, using the electrode in an electrochemical cell to oxidize or reduce the semiconducting polymer. We had it all sketched out on a napkin and hurried back to the lab for a Big Mac attack. Later that same day, Paul Nigrey, then a student in Alan's lab, provided the data that confirmed the success of that approach.
Courageous as a scientist, Alan was willing to move into an entirely new area, to learn new ideas, and even to learn a little physics. We made a habit of getting together on Saturday mornings, sometimes to work on a manuscript, sometimes to just discuss science and to learn from one another. On one such occasion, I decided to teach him the basic physics of the metal–insulator transition. I went to the blackboard, drew a chain of H–H–H–H–H, and said, “Let's consider a chain of hydrogen atoms.” My motive was good, for a chain of hydrogen atoms can be used as a model to explain the essential physics. Alan responded with a characteristically blunt phrase: “No!” he said. “A chain of hydrogen atoms does not exist.” Fortunately, we met again a week later and actually discussed and understood, together, the physics of the metal–insulator transition in terms of a chain of C–H units, the fundamental repeating unit of polyacetylene.
Alan was courageous in many ways. The six years following the Nobel Prize conferment were difficult. He fell and broke a foot, causing him to need a cane for walking; he battled skin cancer and associated surgery; he fell again and broke his hip, which had to be replaced; and he lived for more than three years with the myeloplastic syndrome that required him to get blood transfusions every few weeks. Throughout these difficult times, he “raged against the dying of the light,” to paraphrase the poetry of Dylan Thomas; he traveled incessantly, he continued to do science with laboratories and ongoing projects at Penn and the University of Texas at Dallas, and he exerted his leadership in two institutes named in his honor, the one in New Zealand and another in China.
Alan was famous for his rendition of a Maori war dance. As he told the story, he and his sports teammates performed this fierce dance with associated shouting in the Maori language to frighten opponents. And he delighted in performing it at conference banquets. I will always remember his performance in the wee hours after the Nobel award ceremony and the banquet and ball. We had all moved to a new venue where the university students put on a show, full of fun and spiced with sarcasm. At just the right moment, Alan got up, walked onstage, and did his Maori war dance, as shown in the accompanying photo.
Alan MacDiarmid had a full life in every respect. Those of us who knew him well will truly miss him.