M. Stanley Whittingham is a distinguished professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at Binghamton University, The State University of New York (SUNY Binghamton), and was recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019. He received his BA and PhD degrees in chemistry from Oxford University, where he is an honorary Fellow of New College. He has been active in Li-batteries since 1971 when he won the Young Author Award of The Electrochemical Society for his work on beta-alumina. In 1972, he joined Exxon and discovered the role of intercalation in battery reactions, which resulted in the first commercial lithium rechargeable batteries that were built by Exxon Enterprises. In 1988, he returned to academia at SUNY Binghamton to initiate a program in materials chemistry. In 2013, he was named Fellow of the Materials Research Society. In 2018, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering and received the David Turnbull Lectureship Award from the Materials Research Society.