Inventors of LED bulbs receive Nobel Prize in Physics

The Japanese Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano and American born in Japan Shuji Nakamura.

The Japanese Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano and American born in Japan Shuji Nakamura, were honored this Tuesday with the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the LED bulbs, energy savers.

Isamu Akasaki, 85, was awarded together with two younger researchers, Hiroshi Amano, born in 1960, and Shuji Nakamura, born in 1954 in Japan and of American nationality.

The three scientists were honored for having “invented a new efficient light source from an energetic point of view and beneficial for the environment,” indicated the Nobel’s jury in a statement released in Stockholm.

By inventing the LED bulbs (light-emitting diode), a new light source, “they succeeded in an area where everyone had failed,” noted the jury that qualifies the discovery as “revolutionary.”

This technology is pervasive in everyday life, for example in mobile phones, in which it plays an essential role in the illumination of the screens.