The development of organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, which are used in digital cameras, mobile phones, solar panels and televisions, was led by the work of Martin Pope, a physical chemist who died on Sunday at his home in Brooklyn. He died at 103.
His death was confirmed by his daughter.
When touched with an electrical current, the thin organic materials sandwiched between two electrodes illuminate. Highly energy efficient and often wafer thin, the technology of choice in high-end cellphone displays and televisions is the technology of OLEDs.
Dr. Pope, who changed his name from Poppick to avoid anti-Jewish prejudice, made a number of discoveries in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
His studies were based on organic compounds. Dr. Pope found that the compounds contained the necessary ingredients for the creation of carbon-based electronic devices. Carbon-based materials with Semiconductor properties can be soft and flexible, making them easier to shape into thin films used in electronic devices.
Dr. Pope published a paper in the early 1960s that reported that electricity could be used to generate light.
Dr. Pope's insight into some of the strange quantum mechanical phenomena that were shown in the movie was well ahead of its time. In 1969 he published a paper that showed the possibility of producing two excitons in a crystal after just one photon of light was absorbed.
The result was a scientific two-for-one, according to Dr. Pope. The discovery offers a way to improve the efficiency of solar cells.
Professor Friend said that if you go through the scientific literature, too often stuff is plain wrong.
The book of more than 1,300 pages was first published in 1982.
Dr. Pope did not seek to profit from his discoveries and held few patents.
The Royal Society gave Dr. Pope the Davy medal in 2006 for his research that helped bring about extraordinary advances in chemistry. Several people who built on Dr. Pope's work have won awards. The invention of a technique for making plastic conduct electricity was invented by Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa.
In an interview in 2011, Sir John Meurig Thomas said that Martin Pope's work was a start to all that. He died in 2020.
On August 22, 1918, Martin Pope was born in a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Phillip and Anna came to New York from Poland as teenagers. His father worked in a fur shop.
In an interview in 2011, Dr. Pope said that they were dependent on whether times were good enough for people to buy fur coats.
Isidore Poppick published a research paper in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society as an undergraduate at the City College of New York.
He was a first lieutenant in the Army Air Force in World War II. Dr. Pope applied for a position at the American Cyanamid Company using two names: Isidore Poppick and Martin Pope.
Isidore Poppick received a notice that there were no openings, and Martin Pope received an application.
Dr. Pope was a research scientist at Balco Research Laboratories in Newark. He was married to a high-school teacher until her death in 2015.
After taking a break for graduate studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Dr. Pope returned to Balco and received his PhD in 1951.
After leaving Balco, Dr. Pope took a post as a research scientist in the physics department at New York University, where he began to experiment with organic and inorganic insulators that could be used to store data. He stayed at N.Y.U. for a long time.
Dr. Pope has one daughter, Deborah, and a brother, Michael.
Dr. Pope was known as a scientist who didn't seek publicity.
In the interview, Dr. Pope said he was surprised by the practical application of his discovery.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
