Blue LEDs win Nobel Prize in physics
Light-emitting diodes have enabled sea change in lighting
By Andrew Grant
The invention of blue light-emitting diodes that are central to the energy-efficient lights illuminating homes, offices and electronic displays has earned three scientists the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics. Isamu Akasaki of Meijo University and Nagoya University in Japan, Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University and Shuji Nakamura of the University of California, Santa Barbara will split the roughly $1.1 million prize.
“If we look at the landscape of technology, there’s the transistor and the integrated circuit, and then there’s the blue LED,” says Fred Schubert, an electrical engineer at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.