Architectural Lighting Magazine: Today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it had awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 to three scientists -Professors Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura -“for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".
3 comments:
I'm really glad that they got this. My first thought when I saw the headline was, "Wait, we already have blue LEDs...," and then I read on and found out that it was these guys that created the blue LEDs in the first place!
They have been working on blue LEDs for almost 30 years, and now they finally have the most efficient one, but I have to wonder, is there a MORE efficient one than the one they found?? You don't know because it hasn't been found yet.
I would also like to point out that this article doesn't flip out that these three are Japanese. There was an article last week, or the week before, that made being Asian in theatre such a big deal. Race shouldn't be such a huge problem to make a fuss over. Science already knows that, why can't theatre be as accepting? Aren't we usually the ones that are super accepting and experimental?
I wonder what it is about red and green LEDs that make them easier to produce. I do find it rather interesting that it took about 20 years for this to be academically recognized by the Nobel Prize committee. I wonder if it’s because the technology is now in common use, or for some other reason.
There are some really surprising un-solved problems out there. At first glance it seems like it would be really easy to create a blue led they are so cheap and common. But a Nobel Prize shows that it most definitely wasn't. And to answer Cathy's question they usually wait 10-20 years for tech because they want to see its impact before they give the award. My personal favorite in the category of un-solved (but seemingly easy) problems is grocery carts. There are companies offering million dollar rewards for anyone that can make a grocery cart that will lock up when taken out of its lot (the easy part) but will NEVER lock up when it is in the lot (the apparently million dollar dilemma). It astounds me that in the modern world there are problems as simple as this but the tech just is not there yet.
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