Shuji Nakamura, inventor of bright LED lights, gets Millennium Prize

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This year’s Millennium Prize for technology was granted to Professor Shuji Nakamura for developing light-producing semiconductors. These light-emitting diodes, or LEDs have proven to be effective sources of light, which save energy. Other applications inclide water sterilisation and data storage.
      LEDs already on the market use far less energy than incandescent light bulbs. They also last longer. Nakamura’s patented method for producing bright blue, green, and white laser light is also used in producing sound recordings and in data communications. LEDs that emit ultraviolet light can also be used to purify water in developing countries, for instance.
      LEDs are currently used in display panels, clocks, traffic lights, advertising displays, and toys. In Finland, many saunas use LEDs as their source of light.
     
The Millennium Prize is being awarded for the second time. The prize, worth EUR one million, is given out every two years. It is the world’s largest prize for technology, and is financed by the Finnish state and private Finnish companies.
      Two years ago the prize went to Tim Berners-Lee, the developer of the World Wide Web.
      Nakamura will be presented the prize in September, when Finland holds the Presidency of the European Union.
     
Born on the Japanese island of Shikoku in 1954, Nakamura currently works at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
      While working at Nichia Chemical Industries, he overcame the limits imposed by a small research budget and meagre support from the company to develop a revolutionary production process for semiconductors, which has been extensively utilised by large electronics companies, such as General Electric, NEC, and Sony.
      LEDs are more durable than incandescent bulbs, and they generate less heat.
      In the mid-1990s Nakamura began to apply LED technology to blue lasers, which can replace infrared lasers in CD players. This can quintuple the information content of a CD.
      Blue lasers can also be used for the storage and reading of information on DVDs.
     
Pekka Tarjanne, the chairman of the panel selecting the winner, praised Nakamura’s inventions, particularly for their versatile applications, which are improving the quality of life and sustainable development. Tarjanne compared the "revolutionary" LED technology with Thomas Alva Edison’s incandescent light bulb, whose position could now be usurped by the LED.
      "Nakamura is an ingenious example of tenaciousness and determination in research, and in the achievement of many breakthroughs. He has worked in a resolute manner for decades, and not even powerful setbacks have prevented him from achieving something that other researchers considered nearly impossible", Tarjanne said.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  The million-euro technology advertisement (13.6.2004)
  "Father of the World Wide Web" to collect Finnish technology prize worth EUR 1 million (16.4.2004)

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