Service Honours Nobel Laureate

Mar 19, 04:12 PM

Current Headlines: By TORBIT, Matthew

HE WAS one of the world's greatest scientists, a loyal New Zealander and a good bloke.

Tributes flowed for Nobel laureate Alan MacDiarmid, who was farewelled by friends, family and colleagues at a memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral in Wellington yesterday.

Professor MacDiarmid, 79, died on February 7 after falling down stairs in his home in Philadelphia.

At yesterday's service, Professor MacDiarmid's wife, Gayl Gentile, said her husband -- who had been ill with a blood disease - - was a wonderful loving man who worked passionately till the end. On the Sunday before he passed away, he told her he felt as if he was dying before going to work in his study.

"Then, on the Wednesday, he fell down the stairs and stopped working forever."

New Zealand's only surviving Nobel laureate, Professor Paul Callaghan, called Professor MacDiarmid a hero of the technological age and a hero for many young Kiwi scientists. "Alan was my friend, and my inspiration."

In 2000, Professor MacDiarmid won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, jointly with colleagues Alan Heeger, of Pennsylvania, and Hideki Shirakawa, of Japan. They found that by adding bromine to the silvery polyacetylene (CH)x, its conductivity increased many millions of times.

Yesterday, Professor MacDiarmid's Nobel prize medal was gifted to the Victoria University institute that bears his name, while Ms Gentile presented his Order of New Zealand back to the country.

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