![Japanese-born U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura talks about a laser in a lab after winning the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics, at the University of California Santa Barbara in Isla Vista, California October 7, 2014. [Reuters]](https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/download-1.jpeg?resize=680%2C447)
Japanese-born U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura talks about a laser in a lab after winning the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics, at the University of California Santa Barbara in Isla Vista, California October 7, 2014. [Reuters]
One American scientist and two from Japan were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics today for inventing the blue light-emitting diode, which led to the creation of the now-common LED light bulb.
Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and Japanese-born U.S. citizen Shuji Nakamura won the prize for coming up with this “missing piece that now allows manufacturers to produce white-light lamps.”
About 20% of the world’s electricity is used for lighting. Switching to LED lighting could reduce this to as little as 4 percent, by some estimates.
From Reuters:
The arrival of such lamps is changing the way homes and workplaces are lit, offering a longer-lasting and more efficient alternative to the incandescent bulbs pioneered by Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison at the end of the 19th century.
“Red and green LEDs have been around for a long time but blue was really missing. Thanks to the blue LED we now can get white light sources which have very high energy efficiency and very long lifetime,” Per Delsing, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told a news conference.