Akira Yoshino is a Japanese chemist. He is a fellow of Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya.

Yoshino created the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in 1983 by introducing a safer anode material and a heat sensitive membrane, and has continued to improve his rechargeable battery technology throughout his extensive career. His innovation kick-started an age of global connectivity and technological mobility by enabling the emergence of portable electronic products (mobile phones, laptops) and electric vehicles.

Yoshino was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 alongside M. Stanley Whittingham and John B. Goodenough.

„Akira Yoshino is one of my role models. He brought the greatest advance of battery technology of the last 50 years, the Lithium-Ion battery originally invented by J. Goodenough and S. Whittingham, to mass production. Mass production is where every other battery technology has failed at since. Without him there would be no e-mobility or decent smartphones today and we would miss a key technology to overcome the climate crisis.”

- Florian Ruess, Theion