Japanese solar power guru to be honored Thursday

Yoshihiro Hamakawa

9:06 a.m., April 26, 2005--Yoshihiro Hamakawa, adviser professor to the chancellor at Ritsumeikan University in Shiga, Japan, will receive the 2005 Karl Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit at 3 p.m. on Thursday, April 28, at Bayard Sharp Hall.

The medal and a cash award of $40,000, funded by the Karl W. Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit Trust, is given to an individual who has made significant pioneering contributions to the promotion of solar energy as an alternate source of energy through research, development or economic enterprise or to an individual who has made extraordinarily valuable and enduring contributions to the field of solar energy in other ways.

The award is given in honor of Karl Wolfgang Böer, a longtime UD faculty member, founder of UD’s Institute of Energy Conversion and a distinguished scientist in the field of solar cells.

The recipient of the award is chosen by a panel of commissioners composed of scientists and presidents of several solar energy-related professional societies, a representative of the U.S. secretary of energy and a member of the Böer family.

A prominent scholar in the field of solar photovoltaic energy conversion, Hamakawa explored new materials, device physics and fabrication technologies that led to improving the efficiency of many types of solar cells. In the late 1970s he was a leader in demonstrating valance electron control using an amorphous silicon p-i-n heteroface device structure and developed a new wide bandgap material, amorphous silicon carbide, which is now used by many industries worldwide for manufacture of solar panels.

In 1973, Hamakawa was one of the initiators of the Sunshine Project, a national consortium of public institutions, private enterprises and universities that was sponsored by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in Japan. He is the chairman of the committee for the new Sunshine Project, solar energy division.

The first Karl W. Böer Solar Energy Medal of Merit award was presented in 1993 to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who was cited as an individual who spurred development and focused world attention on solar energy.

Article by Martin Mbugua

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