I'd like you to meet Stan Ovshinsky, one of my heroes...

Stan is a genius, he is named as one of the thirty-five inventors who helped to shape the modern world.

One of the basic ideas that helped build his career was the lifelong motivation: "I'd like to be able to make a better world."

For more than 45 years he's invented and pioneered a new field in science, the "fundamentally new science of amorphous and disordered materials." All in pursuit of new kinds of electronics, batteries, and power sources that would be less harmful to the environment, less polluting but yet still as powerful and efficient to what we use today.

Stan and his wife Iris founded Energy Conversion Devices, Inc (ECD Ovonics) in 1960 with the purpose of using science and technology to solve serious problems in society.

I learned about Stan one day long ago watching PBS with my mom. It was a total accident too, we were turning the TV on to begin watching a teeny bopper chick flick, when we heard Alan Alda's voice introducing his show Scientific American Frontiers. It was their Hydrogen Hopes episode. We both agreed to watch this episode first because the topic really interested us a lot.

The show talked about cars ran by hydrogen, and had Alan kneeling on the ground sniffing the exhaust pipe of a hybrid Ford Focus. [I think that's what caught our attention and made us want to watch] Then they introduce us to Stan and Iris Ovshinsky.

They talk about how Stan and Iris invented a solid alloy block that soaks up hydrogen like a sponge. They have ideas on how to run a car safely off compressed hydrogen. In fact their personal car runs on hydrogen and Alan Alda borrowed the car for the show. That's just one of their many ideas that make me enthralled in their work.

I'm not all that scientific [I can hear those that know me laughing], okay, I am no where near a scientific mind. But I know when I hear something that interests me. Stan and Iris invented these panels that use solar hydrogen. Several structures around the world already use the Ovshinsky's solar panels. I guess that these panels are less efficient in bright sunlight than a normal solar panels but can still create energy even in dim sunlight and in rain, which keeps them desirable. Stan even invented a machine that can make six strips of his panels at a time, each a mile and a half long. His goal is to make electricity from an energy that is as cheap as coal, then turn that electricity into hydrogen.

Anything that might help make the earth a healthier place, and NOT go back to the stone age, totally interests me.

Some of Stan's other discoveries are actually things you and I use daily.

Such as rewritable CD and DVDs.

He's also invented a rechargeable battery that is longer lasting, lighter and smaller than the conventional battery. Which he claims to be environmentally safe because it is lacking the lead that is found in traditional auto batteries. Stan's nickel metal hydride battery is now used in everything from cell phones, to laptops, to electric and hybrid cars.

This is only the little bit's that I have read up on him. There is much more to his story than I can tell you in my itty bitty blog.

One thing that I admire about the Ovshinsky duo is that they have worked and lived together for SO MANY years and they are still such a cute, happy, loving couple. Even in their 80's they continue to care about the environment and Stan continues to invent.

Sometimes people are awesome!