How Blue LED Lights Changed the World and Won a Nobel Prize  

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Apart from adorning blinged-out Mazdas and as bordering for oversized TVs in modern homes, blue LEDs serve a very important function and their inventors were worthy recipients of the recently announced Nobel Prize for Physics, and the $1.1 million paycheck that comes with it.

Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University in Japan and Shuji Nakamura of the University of California in Santa Barbara were recognised for their pioneering work in the field of LED lighting. The group were responsible for creating a low-energy light-emitting diode that produced blue light to accompany the existing red and green diodes that had already been in production for thirty years.

Dark_Side_of_the_MoonTheir discovery opened the door, for the first time, to the possibility of producing white light using LEDs, as white light is the combination of all the colours in the visible spectrum. If you’ve ever refracted white light through a prism and seen the light break up into a rainbow (or seen the cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) you’ll be familiar with this principle.

Low energy lighting has the potential to revolutionise the world’s electricity profile, with estimates suggesting lighting our homes, offices and roads comprises one quarter of our electricity consumption.

LED lights use around 90 per cent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and are much longer-lasting, often withstanding up to 50,000 hours of use. Thousands of businesses and households have realised the savings potential of LEDs, with a typical payback period of only two years it’s no wonder the LED industry is estimated to be worth $80 billion by 2020!

For Shuji Nakamura the long-overdue recognition is particularly poignant considering that in 1993 he only received the equivalent of $200 for his discovery – or enough to replace around four incandescent light fittings with energy saving LEDs.

Their discovery places the group within an esteemed scientific pantheon of Nobel Prize winners in the field of Physics, along with the following: