Two past European Inventor Award finalists have been awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. European Inventor Award 2007 finalist Shuji Nakamura (US) has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, and European Inventor Award 2008 finalist Stefan Hell (Germany) the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The award ceremony will take place in Stockholm on 10 December. Both scientists have previously been honoured by the European Patent Office through its annual European Inventor Award.
The Nobel Academy is recognising Shuji Nakamura jointly with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano for their invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Nakamura was named a finalist by the European Patent Office for the European Inventor Award 2007 in the “Non-European countries” category for the same invention.
Lighting it up: Nakamura creates a world of colour
The invention of the blue light-emitting diode by Nakamura and his colleagues enabled the development of LEDs in any colour, as they could easily be mixed with the green and yellow LEDs that had already been around for some time. In particular, it made it possible to create bright and energy-saving white LEDs, which have become a part of everyday household technology, and are today used in a large number of products ranging from electric lights to mobile phone screens, traffic lights and displays at airports and train stations. For a look at one of the many patents behind the invention, see for example European patent EP92310132.
The energy saving potential of LEDs is tremendous: With 20% of the world’s electricity used for lighting, it has been calculated that optimal use of LED lighting could reduce this to 4%, according to the UK-basedInstitute of Physics. Moreover, as LED lamps are efficient enough to run on local solar power, they could help more than 1.5 billion people who currently have no access to electricity grids, as the BBC reports.
