Japanese, American Win Nobel Physics Prize for LED Invention

Two Japanese scientists and a Japanese-born American scientist have been awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing the environmentally-friendly blue light emitting diodes, commonly known as LEDs.

Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura were honored for their work in the 1990s in creating bright, energy-efficient white light from semiconductors, succeeding where scores of other scientists had failed.

In its announcement Tuesday from Stockholm, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the relatively young technology has contributed to saving the Earth’s resources, and holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids.

Akasaki and Amano are colleagues at Japan’s Nagoya University, while Nakamura is currently working at the University of California in Santa Barbara.

The trio will share the $1.1 million attached to the award.

The 2014 Nobel Prize announcements began Monday, when American-British scientist John O’Keefe and husband and wife Norwegians May-Britt and Edvard Moser were awarded the Nobel prize in medicine for their work in discovering the brain’s inner navigation system.

The Nobel Prize in chemistry will be announced Wednesday, followed by the literature prize on Thursday and ending with the prestigious peace prize on Friday.