Three Japan-born researchers yesterday won the Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing the LED lamp, a boon in the fight against global warming and poverty.
The trio are Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura, a US researcher based in California.
“This year’s Nobel Laureates are rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source — the blue light-emitting diode,” the jury said. “Their inventions were revolutionary. Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps.”
Photo: Reuters
The three researchers produced bright blue beams from semiconductors in the early 1990s, triggering a transformation in lighting technology, the jury said. Red and green diodes had been around for a long time, but without blue light, white lamps were impossible. Devising the blue LED was a challenge that endured for three decades.
“They succeeded where everyone else had failed,” the jury said.
LED lamps emit a bright white light, last for tens of thousands of hours and use just a fraction of energy compared with the incandescent lightbulb pioneered by Thomas Edison in the 19th century.
The most advanced LED lamps now consume nearly 20 times less electricity than regular light bulbs and are improving constantly.
Unusually for a Nobel laureate, Nakamura was employed at Nichia Chemicals, a small Japanese company, when carrying out the research rewarded in Stockholm.
Akasaki worked with Amano at the University of Nagoya when conducting their part of the path-breaking research.
Akasaki, born in 1929, is a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya, while Amano, born in 1960, is a professor at Nagoya University. Nakamura, born in 1954, is now a US citizen and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The three winners are to share an 8 million Swedish kronor (US$1.1 million) prize.
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