3 Japanese Scientists Receive Nobel Medals at Ceremony

Stockholm, Dec. 10 (Jiji Press)--Three Japanese-born inventors of blue light-emitting diode were among the laureates honored at the 2014 Nobel Prize award ceremony, held at Stockholm Concert Hall on Wednesday. Isamu Akasaki, 85, Hiroshi Amano, 54, and Shuji Nakamura, 60, were handed medals and diplomas for the Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf. They are the first Japanese winners of the physics prize since 2008. Including the three, the number of Japanese-born laureates now stands at 22. The creation of blue LED by the end of the 20th century had been believed to be impossible. Red and green LEDs were achieved in the 1960s. Akasaki, currently professor at Meijo University, launched a project to create blue light using gallium nitride in the mid-1970s and, together with Amano, now professor at Nagoya University who was a student of Akasaki at the time, developed a method to produce high-quality gallium nitride crystals in the mid-1980s. Nakamura, professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, improved the quality of gallium nitride-based blue LED to a commercially viable level in the early 1990s, when he worked for Nichia Corp. in Tokushima Prefecture, western Japan. LEDs, which have high energy-efficiency, are currently used in a wide range of products, including light bulbs, mobile phone displays and traffic signals. Without blue LED, white LED lamps would not have been realized. "The 21st century will be lit by LED lamps," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement when it announced the 2014 winners of the physics prize in early October. END