Heeger, Alan Jay (1936-...), an American physicist, won a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize for chemistry. He received this award for the discovery and development of plastic materials in which electric current can flow. Ordinary plastic materials cannot conduct (carry) current. Heeger shared the Nobel Prize with two colleagues in this work, New Zealand-born American chemist Alan G. MacDiarmid and Japanese chemist Hideki Shirakawa. The three scientists conducted the research that led to their prize at the University of Pennsylvania. They published their discovery in a scientific journal in 1977.