Alan MacDiarmid, Nobel Prize Winner, Dies

Alan G. MacDiarmid, whose discovery of plastics that conduct electricity won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, has died at age 79.

MacDiarmid, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, died at his Philadelphia-area home, The New York Times said Friday. He shared his 2000 Nobel Prize with Hideki Shirakawa of the University of Tsukuba in Japan and Alan G. Heeger, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Their work in electricity-conducting plastics paved the way for products such as bright cellphone displays and antistatic coating on film, the Times said.