LED there be light: Three share Nobel for blue diode

STOCKHOLM (AP) — An invention that promises to revolutionize the way the world lights its homes and offices — and already helps create the glowing screens of mobile phones, computers and TVs— earned a Nobel Prize on Tuesday for two Japanese scientists and a Japanese-born American.

By inventing a new kind of light-emitting diode, or LED, they overcame a crucial roadblock for creating white light far more efficiently than incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. Now LEDs are pervasive and experts say their use will only grow.

“Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps,” the Nobel committee said in announcing its award to Japanese researchers Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano and naturalized U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura.

Their work, done in the early 1990s, led to a fundamental transformation of technology for illumination, the committee said. And when the three arrive in Stockholm to collect their awards in early December, “they will hardly fail to notice the light from their invention glowing in virtually all the windows of the city.”

Nakamura, 60, is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Akasaki, 85, is a professor at Meijo University and Nagoya University in Japan, while Amano, 54, is also at Nagoya. Akasaki and Amano made their inventions while working at Nagoya, while Nakamura was working separately at the Japanese company Nichia Chemicals.

At a press conference, Nakamura said he is “happy to see that my dream of LED lighting has become a reality. Nowadays we can buy energy-efficient light bulbs in the supermarket and help reduce energy use. I hope this helps to reduce global warming too,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.

Asked earlier if he realized the importance of his research early on, he told reporters, “Nobody can make a cellphone without ... my invention.”

Akasaki told a nationallytelevised news conference in Japan that he had faced skepticism about his research bearing fruit. “But I never felt that way,” he said. “I was just doing what I wanted to do.”

Before their work, scientists had long been able to produce red and green light with LEDs. But they needed a blue LED as well to make white light, a goal sought for about 30 years. The three new Nobel laureates created blue LEDs.