This Women’s History Month, we celebrate Dr. Esther Sans Takeuchi, a scientist who has helped keep hearts beating all over the world with her contributions to power sources for medical devices. Dr. Takeuchi invented a compact battery for implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) that allows for smaller devices with longer battery life, providing substantial patient benefits.
Dr. Takeuchi was born in 1953 in Missouri. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in chemistry and history and obtained her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Ohio State University in 1981. Dr. Takeuchi next completed post-doctoral training in electrochemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Buffalo. She then began her 22-year career at Greatbatch where she worked on developing the lithium/silver vanadium oxide (Li/SVO) battery.
By the mid-1980s, Dr. Takeuchi had developed and patented a compact Li/SVO battery for use in ICDs. Before that time, ICDs were large devices that had to be implanted into the abdomen due to their bulk, with a maximum battery life of 1.5 years. ICDs require a very high charge for the electrical impulse that shocks the heart, and they must be replaced when their batteries expire, which requires major surgery. Dr. Takeuchi’s innovation was a more powerful, yet more compact, battery that allowed for a smaller and longer-lasting ICD device—meaning fewer surgeries for patients. She achieved this by packing more energy into the battery, stacking alternating layers of anodes and cathodes side by side to increase surface area of active material.
An ICD incorporating Dr. Takeuchi’s technology was first implanted into a patient in 1987. Since that time, Dr. Takeuchi and others have continued to improve upon the Li/SVO battery technology which currently offers a battery life of up to five years.
In 2007, Dr. Takeuchi transitioned her focus to academia where she served as a professor of advanced power sources at University of Buffalo, and distinguished professor of chemistry, material science, and engineering at Stony Brook University. As of 2018, Dr. Takeuchi was the named inventor on 150 patents, the most of any American woman. Of her numerous awards and accolades, she was awarded the prestigious National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Obama in 2010, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2011 and was awarded the EPO’s European Inventor Award in 2018.
Author: Caroline L. Marsili