Japanese American Shuji Nakamura along with two colleagues from Japan won the Nobel Prize for Physics this morning, reports the UC Santa Barbara Current (Photo by Randall Lamb from the Current).
Nakamura along with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano won the honor for their work which lead to the invention of the modern day LED light bulb. The trio developed blue light-emitting diodes in the 1990s which made the LED bulbs possible.
“I am very honored to receive the Nobel Prize from The Royal Swedish Academy of Science for my invention of the blue LED,” said Nakamura. “It is very satisfying to see that my dream of LED lighting has become a reality. I hope that energy-efficient LED light bulbs will help reduce energy use and lower the cost of lighting worldwide.”
Nakamura is a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and is co-director of its Solid State Lighting & Energy Electronics Center.
You can learn more about his life and his accomplishments in the UC Santa Barbara Current.