Here’s to the continual intellectual tussles that produce technological leaps like the super-efficient and durable LED light bulbs that are increasingly displacing incandescent and fluorescent bulbs (and sooty kerosene lamps) and garnered a Nobel Prize for three physicists on Tuesday.
Dennis Overbye provides a nice overview of the award in The Times, as does the Nobel Prize website. The physicists, two from Japan and one from the University of California, Santa Barbara, were lauded for creating a blue light-emitting diode in the early 1990s to complement existing red and green diodes (only with those three colors can white light be generated).
The physics prize has swung in past years from honoring basic scientific advances to rewarding inventors for breakthroughs with broad societal value. This one fits squarely in that category, as Overbye’s piece explained:
In its announcement, the academy recalled Alfred Nobel’s desire that his prize be awarded for something that benefited humankind, noting that one-fourth of the world’s electrical energy consumption goes to producing light. This, it said, was a prize more for invention than for discovery.
Frances Saunders, president of the Institute of Physics, a worldwide scientific organization based in London, agreed with those sentiments. Noting in an email statement that 2015 is the International Year of Light, she said, “This is physics research that is having a direct impact on the grandest of scales, helping protect our environment, as well as turning up in our everyday electronic gadgets.”
I thought it worth noting how such discoveries almost always build on a body of earlier work — in this case by another physicist, Nick Holonyak Jr., who paved the way for this team’s achievement with the invention of the first practical (red) LED, in 1962. Here’s a fascinating interview posted on the 50th anniversary of that achievement by General Electric, his employer when he did the work:
Holonyak and colleagues, while crediting the winners for important work, expressed frustration yesterday that he was left out.
It’s remarkable that another line of research by Holonyak could lead to a practical LET, or light-emitting transistor.
[Insert: As noted in a comment, there were vital steps in the journey before those of Holonyak, including by Rubin Braunstein.]
Congratulations all around.