Three scientists decades apart built the battery now in every phone and EV

Stanley Whittingham built the first working lithium battery in the 1970s, John Goodenough doubled its power with a better cathode in 1980, and Akira Yoshino made it safe enough to sell in 1985. Their combined work created the rechargeable lithium-ion battery, honored with the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

— John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, Akira Yoshino, The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 — Nobel Prize press release, 2019