MacDiarmid, muhk DIHR mihd, Alan Graham (1927-2007), a New Zealand-born American chemist, won a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in 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. MacDiarmid shared the Nobel Prize with two colleagues in this work, the American physicist Alan J. Heeger and the Japanese chemist Hideki Shirakawa. The three scientists conducted the research that led to their Nobel Prize at the University of Pennsylvania. They published their discovery in a scientific journal in 1977.