No Nobel For Nick Holonyak Jr, Father of the LED

szotz writes Nick Holonyak Jr. doesn't want to go gently into that good night. Widely regarded as the father of the LED (for his work on early visible-light devices), he's been making strongly-worded comments about being passed over for the Nobel Prize. His wife said he'd given up on getting it. But, he says, this year's physics award, to inventors of the blue LED, was just plain 'insulting'. The history the LED goes beyond and back further than Holonyak (all the way to the beginning of the 20th century), but a number of his colleagues are disappointed and/or surprised by the snub.

Comments

The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Calibax]

It really is insulting to give a Nobel prize for an improvement to a revolutionary idea, and ignore the person who did the original work. Without Holonyak's original work there would be no basis for the improvement.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is insulting to give a Nobel prize for an improvement to a revolutionary idea, and ignore the person who did the original work. Without Holonyak's original work there would be no basis for the improvement.

And where does the buck stop in this argument? Or should Nobels drift endlessly backwards to Newton, Leibniz, Aristotle, Plato ... Thales of Miletus. Thales of Miletus? All Nobels go to him?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

That award has pretty much 0 to do with real achievement. It is a political power play. Up until Obama got the peace prize I though otherwise. How can you get the prize for having not DONE anything... At least at this point they could point at something and give him one...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Charliemopps]

Yes

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another step in the eventual irrelevance of the Nobel prize..

Obama received a peace price, yet bangs the war drum as well as any of his predecessors.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have you been AC?
 
We live in the age of "everyone gets a trophy".

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[MobyDisk]

The Nobel prize is never given posthumously. That's where it stops.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[drainbramage]

Everyone but Holonyak.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[MobyDisk]

The peace prize is different in that it is, by definition, political. Do not judge the other prizes by how the peace prize is awarded.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Alomex]

Sure, but what if a red LED is a natural evolution while blue LED, once thought impossible is the true revolutionary idea?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[geekmux]

It really is insulting to give a Nobel prize for an improvement to a revolutionary idea, and ignore the person who did the original work. Without Holonyak's original work there would be no basis for the improvement.

And where does the buck stop in this argument? Or should Nobels drift endlessly backwards to Newton, Leibniz, Aristotle, Plato ... Thales of Miletus. Thales of Miletus? All Nobels go to him?

If you're still alive to receive the prize and can feel the sting of the slap in the face when you are passed over, then I'd say that's the litmus test.

If you're dead, well you probably didn't get the email...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Thanshin]

And where does the buck stop in this argument?

At the elephants, obviously.

Otherwise it would be Nobels all the way down. And while the money is infinitely divisible, the awards themselves would have an infinite cost.

Unless you give really tiny, tiny awards.

But that would be cheap for such a noble organization.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

That award has pretty much 0 to do with real achievement. It is a political power play. Up until Obama got the peace prize I though otherwise. How can you get the prize for having not DONE anything... At least at this point they could point at something and give him one...

The gave the peace prize to f-ing Henry Kissinger. Where have you been ?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[rogoshen1]

didn't arafat get one too? :(

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[LWATCDR]

You know that it is hard to not to reference other Nobel awards that are questionable.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[BitZtream]

... The sad part is that people still think the Nobel prizes are meaningful.

Let me preface what I say with: I don't know the physics involved, I'm just putting out thoughts for the sake of discussion. I think the inventor of the LED deserves respect just due to the way it has become embedded in everything we do even if it were a trivial thing to create. Maybe not a Nobel prize, but something appropriate to 'changing the way we view the world' which is what has happened here, with the help of many people.

However, for the sake of argument, the question becomes was inventing the visible light LED actually revolutionary or what it simply repurposing an existing principal in a minor way, and someone else is really the one who created the idea.

I know blue LEDs were considering 'unpossible' based on the original understanding of the physics involved, though I admit I don't know why. Are blue LEDs using some different method or are they a slight tweak on existing LED tech? Are the physics essentially the same? Or are we talking about the same sort of differences between an infrared LED and visible LED when we talk about going from a red LED to a blue LED?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[oodaloop]

And where does the buck stop in this argument? Or should Nobels drift endlessly backwards to Newton, Leibniz, Aristotle, Plato ... Thales of Miletus. Thales of Miletus? All Nobels go to him?

The Nobel prize is never given posthumously. That's where it stops.

Umm... He's STILL ALIVE.

Which one of those is still alive?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[i kan reed]

You could at least look at the post he's replying to.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'd have to say that inventing the first visible light LED trumps creating one in a specific color...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that it is hard to not to reference other Nobel awards that are questionable.

It's almost like there should be a 30 page wikipedia article devoted to just that.

Re: The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Gandhi, who employed nonviolent civil disobedience to free a country and a people from colonial rule, was never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I don't see how anyone could take them seriously or even accept the award.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[BitZtream]

Re: Obama

I don't think its fair to call him out for being involved in wars on its own. He is, by definition, employed to do so for the US government. Even he has stated that its a bit shocking for the president of a country involved in 2 wars at time to be the recipient.

If you want to call out the Nobel issue, do so because of the fact that he got it and had done nothing but been elected as the president of the US. The committee sited one of the primary reasons being his promotion of nuclear non-proliferation ... which is ironic, because what he really means is that he's fine with HIM having control of massive super weapons, but no one else should. Basically, let me be able to wipe out anyone else in the blink of an eye, but no way anyone else should have the same power as me. That is pretty much exactly the opposite of what I consider peaceful intentions.

The peace prize is a political tool, nothing more. Has been since its inception.

What you're really complaining about is that other prizes are becoming political tools rather than awards for achievement.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Lunix Nutcase]

Up until Obama got the peace prize I though otherwise.

Because you believe there was nothing wrong with Henry Kissinger getting one 30 years prior?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[ceoyoyo]

Well, Holonyak just made a red version of existing IR LEDs, so giving him the prize would be doing the same thing to the IR LED inventors.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Thales of Miletus died in 546BC. Nick Holonyak Jr. is still alive.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nobel prize in literature is fairly political, too. It was awarded to Winston Churchill, for example, and the award to William Golding was perhaps a deliberate snub to Graham Greene.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

When Obama got the peace prize for pretty much just showing up, I ceased thinking of the Nobel prize as a meritocracy and haven't even kept track of the winners since then. It's become a bit of a joke.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Shinobi]

Also, keep in mind that the Peace Prize is not awarded by the main Nobel Committe, but instead the Norwegian Nobel Committe, which is selected by the norwegian parliament.

And, as one of the many Norway jokes go:

Why are there no mental asylums in Norway?
It'd cost too much to wall and roof the entire country....

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Kissinger had an actual body of work to show for it.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[marauder68]

Obama read a wonderful speech off his teleprompter to earn one.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Shinobi]

The red visible light LED was just a small progression from the infrared LED. The blue LED required MASSIVE fundamental physics research to even lay the foundation for it being possible.

You can read the scientific background on the Nobel Prize website.

Someone on StackExchange also summed it up like this:
"The invention of MOCVD technology for growing crystals (early 1970s);
Finding the right recipe to grow good GaN by MOCVD (i.e., use a sapphire substrate, start with a low temperature step then switch to high temperature, etc.) (mid-1980s);
Finding the right recipe to grow p-type GaN (what dopant to use (Mg), in what concentration, and what annealing / treating recipe to use to make the Mg dopants actually work and reduce the number of unintended n-type dopants that were canceling it out) (early 1990s);
Once all that was in place, find good structures to make LEDs (e.g. if you can also grow InGaN then you can make quantum wells) (early-to-mid 1990s)."

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[CanHasDIY]

According to the reward committee, Obama's achievement was not being Bush.

Although in retrospect, they probably should have waited a bit to make that determination.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[pla]

Kissinger had an actual body of work to show for it.

More accurately, he had an actual body count to show for it.

The fact that Obama hadn't killed anyone (yet) made him practically a shoe-in for it, by comparison.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not really. Peace and Literature Nobel prizes has been political power plays, the rest not so much. And I do understand Holonyak point, but the Nobel prize was given to the inventors of the blue LEDs, not the red LEDs, not the early LEDs, not the green LEDs, but the blue LEDs, because the implication of the blue LED wasn't just the color, was the frequency of the light. Holonyak invented the red LED, the early LED, and although is noteworthy and a major invention this years Nobel prize has to do with LEDs itself has much as a mug has to do with coffee: nothing at all except being a recipient.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

One could only wish that he'd done nothing. Had he done nothing that would have been preferable. However, I thought the peace prize had to do with advancing peace. He's done the opposite. By ignoring ISIS and allowing them to grow into what they are today in part by regarding them as the "JV team" he has pretty much ensured war, suffering, and attrocities for everyone. By shoving universal health care which ensures that everyone will be forced to buy insurance creating an excess demand that will surely increase costs while simultaneously allowing corporations to reduce your hours to less than 30 a week so they are off the hook he's made sure that the common man is going to pay more for healthcare and have less money to do it. As an added bonus he's promised to tax the crap out of you if you can't afford it. Brilliant. A Nobel Peace prize? He ought to be shot for treason.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[dj245]

Sure, but what if a red LED is a natural evolution while blue LED, once thought impossible is the true revolutionary idea?

Well, maybe they looked at impact. For decades, LEDs were only used for status lights, power lights, and some other things. Switching from mini-incandecent bulbs for these purposes didn't really change much in the grand view of things. Switching out household lighting from incandecent to blue/white LED saves thousands of megawatts of electricity, and enables many impoverished people to have electric light for the first time ever. I went to North Korea this year and even in very remote areas with clearly impoverished people, solar panels, batteries, and LED lighting were very common. Bringing light to the people like that would be a lot more difficult without LED lighting.

And if you think that inexpensive, efficient lighting is not a big deal, try living without it for a week. The availability of inexpensive lighting has become so embedded in Western society that we can't imagine life without it. Think about what that means to the billions of poor people all over the world who are getting, or have gotten it, for the first time.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[spiritplumber]

Managing to win an American presidential election while being a person of color is a significant achievement. Not Nobel worthy, but signficant. Not that the non-science Nobel prizes mean anything anyway.... they weren't set up by Alfred Nobel in the first place.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[HornWumpus]

Nobody has _ever_ mad lasting peace without a body count.

Look at what Ghandi did in Pakistan and Bangladesh when he had power.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Proven? What was the exact dollar figure, and where is the facsimile of the check image to show this supposed transfer of funds to the Nobel committee?

No, it's only "proven" in your own mind. The rest of us prefer to live out here in the real world of facts and figures.

(note I made no mention on whether he deserved it. That's purely subjective and has no bearing on your claim.)

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[pla]

If you want to call out the Nobel issue, do so because of the fact that he got it and had done nothing but been elected as the president of the US.

Still better than "Europe". Talk about phoning it in...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Shinobi]

The Peace Prize was set up by Nobel in his will

The economy prize, however, is not a Nobel prize.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[silfen]

Holonyak didn't invent the LED, he created the first visible light LED. As such, his contribution is of the same kind as the inventors of the blue LED: he changed the emission frequency of an existing device.

Going from infrared to yellow was also a much simpler step than going from yellow to blue; the latter required different and more complex physics. Since the price is for contributions to physics, I think it makes sense that they honored this. From a practical standpoint, before blue LEDs, LEDs were just instrument lights; afterwards, they became a usable light source and display technology, so that was really the critical step.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[0123456]

Nobody has _ever_ mad lasting peace without a body count.

Well, yes. The easiest way to make peace is to kill everyone who disagrees with you.

That doesn't mean it's a good idea, though.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[fnj]

Ah, but can you define "inventor of the LED"? H. J. Round for getting luminescence from silicon carbide in 1907? Oleg Losev for his demonstration in 1927? Rubin Braunstein who found infrared emission from gallium arsenide in 1955? Baird and Pittman for patenting an (infrared) "Semiconductor Radiant Diode" which was efficient in 1962? Holonyak for reporting the first visible red LED in 1962? Any recognition for M. George Craford for the first yellow LED and for bettering the efficiency by an order of magnitude in 1972? And for T. P. Pearsall for the first high brightness LEDs suitable for driving fiber optics in 1976? And whoever invented the first green LED? And of course the inventors of the blue LED?

I think Holonyak for first visible LED is certainly deserving, but the whole chain of discoveries and inventions was crucial to the LCD monitors and flatscreen TVs we enjoy today.

The same goes for the transistor. Lilienfeld filed for a patent on the FET in 1925, yet we all thought Bardeen, Shockley and Brattain were first in 1948. As it turned out, their bipolar transistor tech turned out in the long run to be completely eclipsed by the (MOS)FET.

Re: The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how Obama got the peace prize when he has bombed more countries than any other president since WWII.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[HornWumpus]

Doesn't mean it's a bad idea ether. The devil is in the details.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Obama had nothing to do with his own prize -- it was a slap in the face to Bush.

Obama should have refused it because participating in such a political action by foreigners by playing their puppet in a play is beneath the Presidency.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait...
You went to the North Korea?? and they let you tour the homes of people in impoverished region???? And they were using equipments that cost tens of thousands of dollars???????
People in North Korea can barely afford food in their mouth... and they are using solar panel and LED lighting because they don't have electricity???
People in rural area make less than $100 a month, while LED light costs ~$10 (Usually some order of magnitude more than that, because it has to be imported)

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

It really is insulting to give a Nobel prize for an improvement to a revolutionary idea, and ignore the person who did the original work. Without Holonyak's original work there would be no basis for the improvement.

You are 100% correct.

The Nobel Prize is a joke and has been for a long time.

I think Nick H. can and should be proud of his work, and
I know I personally appreciate the existence of the LED
every single day, because I depend on lights which use
LED emitters in my work place.

Fuck the Nobel Prize committee, they pander to the powerful, and that is the
opposite of what was intended by Alfred Nobel.

.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[GarethIwanFairclough]

Where have you been AC? We live in the age of "everyone gets a trophy".

I must assume my trophies are stuck in the mail somewhere.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[operagost]

I should get the prize for peace this year. I haven't bombed anyone-- ever!

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[skydyr]

Gandhi, or at least Mahatma Gandhi, never had political power beyond inspiring the fight for independence, so it's hard to talk about how he used it.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, you are aware that there are different committees for the difderent prizes? I should know, my PhD advisor was previously the chair of the physics committe.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[operagost]

My body count is 0. Where's my award?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

The peace prize is different in that it is, by definition, political. Do not judge the other prizes by how the peace prize is awarded.

or for that matter the so-called "Economic Sciences" one, which was established at the instigation of Sweden's central bank only in 1968.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you. I was deliriously excited when Obama was elected, but when he was awarded the NPP I was like "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!". Meaningless.

And now he's President Droney McDrone Surveillance Master. /sobs quietly for the infiltration of liberal leadership/

Re: The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess making the first visible led - laser means nothing

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[sexconker]

the implication of the blue LED wasn't just the color, was the frequency of the light.

Congratulations, you're in the lead for today's "Dumbest Fucking Post" award.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[JoeMerchant]

He's not Bush.

He's never stood in a flight suit under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished"

He's actually ramped down foreign deployments, not just planned to do it.

He's proactively involved special forces in trouble spots before full scale deployments become necessary.

He's just a figurehead in front of a much larger machine that makes his decisions for him - well, o.k., on that one he is just like Bush.

But, the machine that Obama represents, corrupt, inconsistent, and self-serving as it is, seems to be an improvement over the machine that Bush represented. Now, if we can get an improvement over Obama next time, we can call ourselves an enlightened, empowered electorate, at least for a few years.

Re: The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Only because he was assassinated before it could be awarded to him...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[davester666]

If everyone at the meetings are Jews, none of them stand out as looking "Jewish".

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Marginal Coward]

Sure, but what if a red LED is a natural evolution while blue LED, once thought impossible is the true revolutionary idea?

Exactly right. A (high-brightness) blue LED must have been desired shortly after the red one was invented in 1962, but it wasn't until 1993 that one was created. So, it must have been a pretty difficult physics problem to solve.

That said, since blue LEDs are a variation on a theme, they seem more like an "invention" than a fundamental breakthrough, like other Nobel prize winners such as the transistor. For example, is a blue LED as fundamentally different from a red LED as a transistor is from a vacuum tube?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't arafat get one too? :(

Yes, but that was for actually sitting down and negotiating peace with Israel, and IIRC, his counterpart (Sharon?) got one too.

Tarnished by the fact that at about the same time or later, Arafat was quietly smuggling arms or something to that effect.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue, w/o green and red is just as useless. All three are necessary for white light. Almost by definition, the last piece is the hardest...Doesn't make it ground breaking...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a certain color blindness to say it was a slap in the face to Bush. It must have been something for the Kim Jong's and Castro's of the world to see an African with the keys to the kingdom discuss non-proliferation after taking the throne from a Nazi descendant.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[TheRaven64]

That isn't a Nobel Prize, it's the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (which is, like the Nobels, selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and announced at the same time as the Nobels, but it is not a Nobel prize).

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the peace prize is political by definition. And if it was awarded to KIssinger, Mother Theresa and Arafat, then anyone can get it. Also, one could argue that Obama's prize was avarded to American people for not electing McCain/Palin.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[ArmoredDragon]

He's actually ramped down foreign deployments, not just planned to do it.

An act which alone started yet another foreign war:

http://classic.slashdot.org/su...

Which by the way, all of this "ramping down" was already something Bush had planned and was even done under his original timeline, so I'm not letting him off here, but Obama could have stopped it. Still, I'm not sure why you credit Obama for it in the first place.

He's proactively involved special forces in trouble spots before full scale deployments become necessary.

This is something every recent president has done. (And in many cases it gets us into trouble.) Do you have blind worship for this guy or something? I mean this statement alone suggests your nose is presently getting browner as we speak.

But, the machine that Obama represents, corrupt, inconsistent, and self-serving as it is, seems to be an improvement over the machine that Bush represented.

How the hell would that be, exactly? He appoints people to his cabinet who believe they can do whatever the fuck they want. I mean shit, his DOJ thinks it can throw whatever charges it wants even against people that have been found not guilty by a jury of their peers. If anything it's worse, yet somehow you believe it's an improvement?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Shinobi]

Physics and Chemistry are handled by SUB-committes of KVA, and in PRACTICE, they cross-reference a lot. And while Karolinska Sjukhuset are responsible for the physiology/medicine prize, they in practice cross-reference with the chemistry and physics sub-committes at KVA.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Jonifico]

Dude, you're so mixing this up. Thing is, if they give me a Nobel Prize for inventing the computer, shouldn't they give a Nobel to the one who made the transistor? Oh, wait. They did!

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the committee which decides is *completely* different. The Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the one for Physiology or Medicine by the Karolinska Institutet, but the Peace prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament.

So it's not only a different group of people who do the peace prize, they're from a completely different *country*.

How anyone can seriously propose that the decisions about the peace prize in any way shape or form reflect the integrity of the science prizes, I can't say. (The science prizes certainly have their own share of controversies, but you don't need to go heaping the peace prize's issues at their door.)

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is my point. At this point they could give him an award. But at the time it was just silly. He had not done anything yet.

He's not Bush.
I can get the same award by this logic.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

You're looking it the wrong way. Bush should have gotten a Peace Prize for not quite managing to invade Iran and North Korea. This simple (in)action saved millions of lives.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[bluefoxlucid]

He's better off without it. The Nobel Prize is a circle-jerk for patsy good-old-boys's club jackasses, not a serious scientific recognition. It's the club for people who have friends high up in the club.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[bluefoxlucid]

Comparing Churchill to Obama is a hilarious leap in logic, though. Churchill was one of the greatest speakers of our time. As a speechwriter, he's completely respectable.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Alomex]

As best as I understand yes, researchers thought blue couldn't be achieved because of some theoretical limits as opposed to simple engineering of materials required to move up from the infrared to the visible part of the spectrum.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[JoeMerchant]

Can't get elected without a name and birth certificate.. oh, wait...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Zxern]

Sadly things might have turned out a little better there if had taken power.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[nashv]

The Nobel prize is not given for scientific achievement or for being the first to do anything. It is given for accomplishments that influence the world and society in a substantial way (in the opinion of the Nobel committee).

The message being sent here is that LEDs were cool, but there was no significant impact of LEDs on the world until the blue LED came along, allowed production of white light and thereby the use of LEDs in lighting - substantially increasing the per capita energy efficiency in the entire world .

You may dispute whether blue LEDs really made a difference - but the 'original work, first to do it' is not (and never was) a reason for the Nobel prize awards.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[AvitarX]

Also, fuck blue LEDs.

I know, they are useful blah blah, but so is sleep.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[JoeMerchant]

He's proactively involved special forces in trouble spots before full scale deployments become necessary.

This is something every recent president has done. (And in many cases it gets us into trouble.) Do you have blind worship for this guy or something? I mean this statement alone suggests your nose is presently getting browner as we speak.

Lately I've seen a lot of flak about excessive use of drones, etc. etc. etc. So, sure, even Jimmy Carter tried to use the Seals, and it's always the CinC's fault when something goes wrong. Pulled out too early? That's why we've got ISIS. Pulled out too late? Fathered another Vietnam. Nuked 'em all? Oh dear, can't do that. Well, then, what are all the damn submarines and waste plutonium for?

In whatever year it was that Obama was elected, the USA had a choice, and we chose the less warmongering of the two parties... it's really the US voters who got that peace prize, the committee just needed a single person to award it to.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[shutdown -p now]

Well, maybe they looked at impact. For decades, LEDs were only used for status lights, power lights, and some other things. Switching from mini-incandecent bulbs for these purposes didn't really change much in the grand view of things. Switching out household lighting from incandecent to blue/white LED saves thousands of megawatts of electricity, and enables many impoverished people to have electric light for the first time ever. I went to North Korea this year and even in very remote areas with clearly impoverished people, solar panels, batteries, and LED lighting were very common. Bringing light to the people like that would be a lot more difficult without LED lighting.

Which is all well and good, but then they should rename the prize into "Nobel prize for social impact" or some such. What does this all have to do with fundamental physics?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[shutdown -p now]

Isn't "finding the right recipe" fundamentally an engineering breakthrough rather than a theoretical scientific one?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much of a significant achievement in the depths of an economic crisis when you are running against the incumbent party and they are offering a completely uninspiring candidate who got strong support from virtually no "subgroup" within the party. In such a situation, a smooth talking used car salesman will win unless too many pictures of him having sex with hamsters, toddlers, goats, and unwilling adults are found - race is immaterial.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[HornWumpus]

He had tons of political power. Just no office. His word was as good as law. Nobody could have defied him.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Shinobi]

It's also a scientific breakthrough, with what they did. But, the prize is also meant to promote science that affects society and mankind directly.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[MattskEE]

The blue LED may have been harder than the red LED for the reasons that you give, but Holonyak did make some key accomplishments including the demonstration of a ternary alloy semiconductor and tuning the bandgap and thus color by varying alloy composition which has paved the way for achieving all of the different colors for LEDs in use today and is also used for the InGaN emission layer in the blue LEDs.

An alloy semiconductor instead of having, for example, one group III and one group V element in perfect 50% ratio in a uniform crystal structure mixes it up and uses two or more group III elements and two or more group V elements. In the case of Holonyak he used two group V elements: Arsenic and Phosphorous. At the time at least some people did not think that an alloy semiconductor would even work, and it is a little weird because the crystal structure is now non-uniform where a given group V crystal site contains one element or the other at random. In fact this randomness does slow down the electrons. Holonyak also showed that the bandgap could be tuned by varying the relative concentrations of the group V elements. You can read more about him in a nice IEEE profile.

I don't know enough about the history to say who should have gotten the Nobel, but certainly no matter who they selected somebody would have been snubbed.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[mholve]

Exaaaactly. And for the reading impaired, I was talking about Holonyak.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[devnulljapan]

That award has pretty much 0 to do with real achievement. It is a political power play. Up until Obama got the peace prize I though otherwise. How can you get the prize for having not DONE anything... At least at this point they could point at something and give him one...

You're confusing the Nobel Peace prize, which is as you say political in nature (interesting you picked on the Obama prize, stupid as it was, but missed Henry Kissinger's peace prize, is certainly ridiculous) with the Nobel prizes for scientific merit.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[WhoolaHoop]

In fact white leds are normally made by a "single colour" LED illuminating a phospor. Not by mixing red, green and blue.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[anotheryak]

If you had bothered to read the article rather than just making a snotty post, you would note that they don't award posthumous awards. So to give one to Newton, you would need a shovel and a time machine.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[anotheryak]

I think Holonyak for first visible LED is certainly deserving, but the whole chain of discoveries and inventions was crucial to the LCD monitors and flatscreen TVs we enjoy today.

LEDs have little to do with flatscreen televisions or LCD monitors. With the exception of a few small OLED screens (which are totally different), those are all LCD devices. LCD!=LED

Even if they claim to be LED, that's just the backlight. And most LCD monitors (all but the very newest) are still lit by fluorescent tubes, and they work just fine. This includes the two HPLP2475w's I'm reading this one right now. The only LEDs are the green power indicators.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

You thought the Nobel Peace Prize meant something until Obama got it? Did you have even the smallest doubt after Kissinger got it?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[cyn1c77]

It really is insulting to give a Nobel prize for an improvement to a revolutionary idea, and ignore the person who did the original work. Without Holonyak's original work there would be no basis for the improvement.

And where does the buck stop in this argument? Or should Nobels drift endlessly backwards to Newton, Leibniz, Aristotle, Plato ... Thales of Miletus. Thales of Miletus? All Nobels go to him?

Well, considering that Holonyak developed the first visible light LED, the buck should probably stop with him.

Of course, we are talking about an organization that gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after he was elected president, so many already question their logic.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[kanweg]

Correction: The Peace prize is awarded by a Norwegian committee, not by the committee that awards the other Nobel prizes.

Bert

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[GlobalEcho]

I happen to know someone who won the Economics prize, and even ended up going to Sweden for some of the award week. The economics medal is technically different, as you say, but is treated identically in a functional sense. That is to say, the winners all appear together at various ceremonies, are all given the same considerations and support, speak at the same events and so on. Press coverage also often fails to point out the distinction.

(In contrast, the Peace prize is awarded differently, has different event and ceremonies, etc., etc.)

Based on these observations, I've started thinking of economics medal as equivalent to the others in every objective sense that matters.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

He had tons of political power. Just no office. His word was as good as law. Nobody could have defied him.

Which is why he got away "sleeping" with prepubescent girls.

No one would dare stop him.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, It's the Nobelförsamlingen at Karolinska Institutet that selects the laureates for the Medicine/Physiology prize.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Exaaaactly. And for the reading impaired, I was talking about Holonyak.

Well, in that spirit, you were replying to someone talking about Thales of Miletus. That's why people are calling you an idiot for saying that "he's still alive." Thales certainly isn't.

That post was replying to someone who argued that passing over Holonyak (still alive) for people who built on his work was perfectly all right. If we always gave Nobels to the original inventor, Thales would get all of them. The reply was pointing out that Thales couldn't get all the Nobels, because he's long dead. Holonyak is still alive and therefore can claim to be passed over.

You think maybe that you should learn how to read before calling other people reading impaired?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Darinbob]

Literature prize might be partially political too at times.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Darinbob]

The peace prize is not a life time achievement award. It is often an award for that particular year, as in who did the most in that year to stop wars or promote peace, etc. Thus they give the award for the peace process that occured rather than wait a decade to see if it actually holds over time. I think the committee was just genuinely glad that it looked like progress was being made and the two sides actually talked to each other.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[spiritplumber]

Thanks, I thought it was more than just that one.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

your logic is pretty silly

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't a Nobel Prize, it's the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (which is, like the Nobels, selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and announced at the same time as the Nobels, but it is not a Nobel prize).

Really, it's not? Their official web site seems to say otherwise:

http://www.nobelprize.org/

You are pedantically correct though: it was not one of the original prizes paid for by the arms manufacturer.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well start giving out Nobels for Voodoo...

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[NoKaOi]

According to the reward committee, Obama's achievement was not being Bush.

No, his biggest achievement was defeating John McCain (and Romney but that didn't happen until after the peace prize was awarded). Although Obama has proven that he doesn't give a shit about peace, McCain would have made Obama look like Ghandi by comparison. At minimum, we'd be in a full-scale war with Iran. So, by winning the elections, he really did contribute to world peace significantly, not that he even comes close to deserving a peace prize, but it really is his biggest achievement in contributing to the good of the US and the world.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[KeensMustard]

Obama had nothing to do with his own prize -- it was a slap in the face to Bush.

Not so much Bush himself but the power behind him, the minds in charge (Rumsfeld/Cheney etc.) and the mindset that, given the chance, allowed that regime with it's power structures and it's outlook to continue in power.

Obama should have refused it because participating in such a political action by foreigners by playing their puppet in a play is beneath the Presidency.

What Obama should have done was hang them. Behead them and place their severed heads on sticks in the public square. Not literally of course, but symbolically - perhaps through a process similar to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation commission. That is the way the world saw the NeoCons - as evil as apartheid. Something to be confronted, discussed openly and honestly, dismantled completely, and then, and only then, left behind. And perhaps we viewed Obama as a form of apology, an acknowledgement of the wrongs done by the US, of failures of standard and behaviour.

So in a sense, the Nobel Peace Prize was an attempt at something of a detente, a chance to go back to the way things were. A lot of Iraqis died, and some explanation is/was owed as to why, and how such disasters will be avoided in the future. And a form of apology is/was owed. We were right, Bush and his supporters were wrong. Bad behaviour should be followed by an apology, even at the national level.

Instead what we got was a type of Bush-lite. No acknowledgement of the harm done. A change in language, but no obvious behavioural change. No strategy to prevent another disaster of bush/rumsfeld/cheney sized proportions. So you are right: if the Obama we see is the Obama that he intended to be in office, he should never have accepted it.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[MobyDisk]

Here is one source of the issue, taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

In 2001, Alfred Nobel's great-grandnephew, Peter Nobel (b. 1931), asked the Bank of Sweden to differentiate its award to economists given "in Alfred Nobel's memory" from the five other awards. This request added to the controversy over whether the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is actually a "Nobel Prize".[16]

[16] (Ntb-Afp). "Alfred Nobels familie tar avstand fra økonomiprisen". Aftenposten.no. Retrieved 26 January 2014.

Although truthfully, if I created a prize called the "Best Slashdot post in memory of Alfred Nobel" and paid for it separately, I can see why one would be hesitant to call it a Nobel prize, no matter who gave it or when. I wonder what power Nobel's will has today? Does someone have the power to actually pay for the prize out of Nobel's money, or to change the rules he laid out?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Obama? Cause giving the PEACE prize to Yasser Arafat wasn't enough? ROFLMAO.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Nobel prizes are only awarded to living people. Your argument is invalid.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Wrong. The original intention of the Nobel Prize was to spur human progress through innovation and development. That's one of the main reasons why it is not awarded posthumously - it's too late to motivate someone who is already dead.

The Nobel Peace prize for Obama was in this spirit. It should not be understood as a reward for anything he did, but as a motivational calling to deliver. And a moral message to the President, a reminder of the impact his decisions can have on the whole world.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Shinobi]

Nobel's will has a lot of power. All prizes are handed out according to the rules and guidelines expressed within the will.

As for the money, the Nobel Foundation manages the investments, and pays out the money for the Prizes. The rules are VERY difficult to change, to the point that you can describe it as borderline impossible.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete BS. Tons of people defied him. His word was not law.
Hindu's attacked his positions, Muslim's attacked his positions.
Indian Brit's attacked his positions and ignored what he said.
He was shot by a Hindu nationalist. I'd say that is a pretty big act of defiance.
Study some history.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[The Ickle Jones]

An act which alone started yet another foreign war:

No, that would be our warmongering politicians (including Obama). We don't actually have to play world police.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet it's virtually everywhere referred to and regarded as "Nobel Prize in Economics".

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the same award you competed for yesterday with your "I'd love to see you make that same post 10 days from now when the number of confirmed cases in the US skyrockets" comment? See you in 9 days, sexconker.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

No fucker. That whole Thales bullshit was a straw man (on fire) that is distracting from the actual topic. For those of us who know how to read and process grammar and have been paying attention, we already knew he was talking about Holonyak. I'm glad that calling people stupid on the Internet makes you feel good though.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing the Technically Correct card doesn't make you any more correct in the real world. If I were those Nobel guys, I'd probably sue the shit out of those peaceniks who are sullying their good name.........bwhahhahahahaaa. I tried, couldn't do it......

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[fnj]

Er, practically all monitors and TVs currently manufactured have LED backlights.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Bandgap engineering is amazing stuff. I fondly remember sneaking into a device physics class as a sophomore and being bowled over by it.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

He was elected President of the US, that's what he did. And it goes to show that in any country with democratically elected heads of state it's possible for a person from any group to be elected.

I disagree with the conservative interpretation that he did nothing, he didn't do nothing, he ushered an entire country into a new era with a new set of assumptions. And that's what the committee was presumably trying to spur.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[TechnoCore]

You do understand that the peace price is supposed to be a political price. It's very nature when created was kind of controversial. At the time Sweden and Norway were in a union. Mr Nobel split the prices so all prices are rewarded from committees in Sweden, except the peace price which is rewarded from a committee in Norway. Maybe because he thought Sweden at the time were more militaristic than Norway.

It is sometimes given to people in a position to do good, but haven't actually done so yet. Like peer pressure or an encouragement I guess.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Bartles]

No, just a time machine. He wouldn't be in the ground when he was still alive.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

He provided the necessary copy. It's just racists that insist that the proof is higher than it is because he's a secret Kenyan Muslim.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you read how well Churchill wrote? He was pretty dammed good with language.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad he did not write his own speeches

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost by definition, the last piece is the hardest...

Bullshit. It could have taken 40 years to make red and green, followed by a couple of years of making blue. In fact, it took only a couple of years to make red and green and 40 years to make blue.

Doesn't make it ground breaking..

No, what makes it groundbreaking is the actual physics involved. And the actual physics involved in making a blue LED was groundbreaking, as opposed to the actual physics involved in making a red or green LED, which were pretty straightforward.

That's why they got the Nobel prize for physics: the blue LED was both interesting physics and practically important, while the red and green LEDs were merely useful.

In addition, blue by itself would have been sufficient, since you can get the other colors by downconversion (that's how white LEDs work).

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

God didn't need an LED to create light.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[quenda]

That award has pretty much 0 to do with real achievement. It is a political power play. Up until Obama got the peace prize I though otherwise.

Really? You didn't notice anything odd about Henry Kissinger getting the Peace Prize for Vietnam?
Or Arafat etc for bringing peace to Palestine?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nobel prize is never given posthumously. That's where it stops.

"Never" may be too strong a strong word. In 2011 Nobel committee broke their own rule http://www.naturalnews.com/033827_nobel_prize_dead_scientist.html . In the past they have used the "not to grant posthumously" to justify the case of Mahatma Gandhi. Politics as usual ...and in all places!

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

And he's been busy bombing countries with little outcry. He just avoided making up reasons for doing it and went ahead and did so whatever congress said... so yeah.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Garridan]

The shovel is to give to Liebnitz in exchange for the shovel that he borrowed from Newton. That'd settle the grudge that culminated in the calculus debacle, and advance scientific progress to the point that we'd have a time machine in our lifetime.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Garridan]

Yeah... about that...

Re: The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush LITE?!

WTF man, if anything Bush was the appetiser to the main fucking course.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

If you bothered to read the article it appears that this was a clerical error, They didn't realize that he had died when they granted the award. I'm guessing that once it was announced that there wasn't really anything they could do about it.

Anyways, the purpose of the prize is to encourage individuals to continue creating new innovations and until the undead rise that's going to require being alive.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, what you described there has almost nothing to do with physics. They are either chemistry or chemical engineering. I don't understand why they gave physics prize to the inventors of LEDs.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but those phosphors need high-energy photons to work - thus blue or UV LED's.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, considering that Holonyak developed the first visible light emitting LED diode, the buck should probably stop with him.

FTFY

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Same AC.
Found this further down the comments.

...pushing existing infrared LEDs into the visible part of the spectrum as done by Nick Holonyak...

My pedantry stands corrected: GP refers to LEDs emitting visible light in contrast to LEDs emiting light outside the visible spectrum.

Re: The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[KeensMustard]

Bush (actually Cheney/Rumsfeld) was responsible for 100-160 thousand deaths. That's the full cream. If you can indicate a comparable death count for Obama I might accept your statement.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Reservoir Penguin]

Well.. In his will Nobel did specify that the prizes should be warded for the discoveries that provided "greatest benefits to the mankind".

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just a preposterous proposition you made. How far back? Really? Holonyak and his group invented the LED. He basically got shit on without any recognition at all. It truly is an insult and that's how far back you have to go.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[doccus]

I don't know where the Nobel prize lost it's integrity, but both it and the Nobel Peace prize have become a joke. They're not worth the paper the certificate is printed on, anymore.

Re: The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well first of all, if you knew anything about the nobel prize, you'd know it can't be giving posthumously.

But yes, it seems silly to overlook someone whose work was a foundation for all LEDs in favour of research focusing on one volour diode.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[BalthCat]

Did you read that? They announced it without awareness of his death and stuck to it. It's not like they can pretend they don't know Gandhi's dead.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[mholve]

How is this moderated to -1?!

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[CanHasDIY]

Pulled out too early? That's why we've got ISIS.

Point of fact, ISIS started in Syria, a nation we never sent troops to who would need "pulled out." So that theory falls on it's face.

No, bud, we got ISIS from US officials who insisted on arming Syrian rebels without regard to the potential fallout - US officials like Barack Obama.

Hey, isn't that pretty much how Al Queda got their start, too? And the Taliban?

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[CanHasDIY]

Although Obama has proven that he doesn't give a shit about peace, McCain would have made Obama look like Ghandi by comparison. At minimum, we'd be in a full-scale war with Iran.

Rather than the current situation of a mid-scale war with damn near every single other middle-eastern nation, arming rebels who then turn out to be ISIS.

Considering how things have turned out, I almost would have preferred the "war with Iran" option. But the fact is, our blood and treasure will be used to protect US corporate interests in the region, regardless of which puppet gets "elected" to lead the charge.

Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's al part of the big in your face visual "Asians are smarter than you" propaganda push they need, so that the big globalist foot eaters can buy u up cheap once they've made u second best. Nothing has been, is, or ever really will come out of Asia that isn't a direct copy and marginal improvement/tangent of something in America or Europe. It's also a push to force education towards the Asian rote learning methodology - the idea that students are empty vessels, know nothing, have nothing to give and must be indoctrinated by a system of control.

Maybe

[perryizgr8]

I don't know enough about the specific circumstances in which both these people invented their respective devices, but I think there can be a scenario where the inventor of the base invention does not get the prize but the inventor of an improvement does. For example, maybe when Holonyak invented the LED, various technologies had reached a point where anybody in his position would inevitably make an LED. But, maybe the inventors of the blue LED did a huge amount of original research and invented a device well ahead of its time. Of course all this might be bullshit and Holonyak might be right.

Re:Maybe

[timeOday]

It is true, attribution of credit is ridiculously subjective if not arbitrary at all levels, from authorship of papers, to how much money each person makes under any given economic system. There is no real solution to this, although some systems are better than others.

Re:Maybe

[halivar]

FWIW, he didn't invent the LED. He invented the red-visible LED. Scientists at Texas Instruments invented the infrared LED first.

Re:Maybe

[Shinobi]

You are almost correct. If you read the scientific background for the decision, you'll see that the blue LED was a real breakthrough, requiring a lot of fundamental physics research, while Holonyak's own papers show that he was more involved in further evolution of existing LEDs. Holonyak didn't actually invent the original LEDs, and those who did are dead, and the Nobel Prize is never awarded posthumously.

As someone on StackExchange summed it up too:

"The invention of MOCVD technology for growing crystals (early 1970s);
Finding the right recipe to grow good GaN by MOCVD (i.e., use a sapphire substrate, start with a low temperature step then switch to high temperature, etc.) (mid-1980s);
Finding the right recipe to grow p-type GaN (what dopant to use (Mg), in what concentration, and what annealing / treating recipe to use to make the Mg dopants actually work and reduce the number of unintended n-type dopants that were canceling it out) (early 1990s);
Once all that was in place, find good structures to make LEDs (e.g. if you can also grow InGaN then you can make quantum wells) (early-to-mid 1990s)."

The Blue LED inventors were awarded the prize because they managed to put together a lot of pieces of highly original research, and doing something that was in fact considered impossible for quite a while by many LED researchers.

Re:Maybe

[Noah Haders]

also, I thought that the nobel went to the guys who made the blue laser, not the blue LED.

Re:Maybe

[fnj]

H. J. Round demonstrated visible (green) luminescence from a point contact on a silicon carbide crystal in 1907. That was quite a while before TI was founded, and before Holonyak's breakthrough.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

And from first hand experience, that is a biach!

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2014/advanced-physicsprize2014_2.pdf

Disclaimer: TL;DR
I have to say this sure sounds more like an engineering breakthrough at best.
I'm even reluctant to use the word "breakthrough", as it seems more like a culmination of a series of technologies by many people beyond the celebrated laureates.
I'm sorry I don't quite see the "requiring a lot of fundamental physics research" (they made a better, more practical LED...but it's still a LED...there's no new PHYSICS here...).

That's nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nobel peace prize winner of 2009 just bombed his 7th Muslim country.

Re:That's nothing!

[Major Blud]

Not to mention they gave the same prize to Arafat, but not to Gandhi.

Re:That's nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention they gave the same prize to Arafat, but not to Gandhi.

Well Kissinger got the nobel peace price. What a joke, the greatest mass murder in modern history right after Stalin.
Kissinger should be rotting in a prison alongside his prize.

Re:That's nothing!

[Opportunist]

Huh? After Kissinger got it I thought this was some sort of 1984 prize. You know, "ministry of peace" and that.

Re:That's nothing!

[rahvin112]

The peace prize is a popularity contest, nothing more. Get over it. They've given the peace prize to people that were at one time terrorists that killed innocent civilians. That should be all the evidence you need that it's about popularity, not about bringing peace.

Re:That's nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Least he's not paling around with ISIS.

Unlike the rich white guy.

Re:That's nothing!

[wbr1]

That's simply to prove that he is not, in fact, a Muslim. However, given the propensity for Muslims to bomb each other, I think it may prove the opposite. :P

Re:That's nothing!

[Stormy Dragon]

Don't forget that time the gave it to Al Gore for doing a really awesome job on his Powerpoint slides.

Re:That's nothing!

[shutdown -p now]

Don't forget Gorbachev.

(In case anyone wonders, as a failed leader, the guy bears a considerable share of responsibility for ethnic conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and civil war in Georgia and Tajikistan. I still find it supremely ironic that so many people in the West think that dissolution of the USSR was peaceful.)

Re:That's nothing!

[RandomAdam]

I was sure Mao was still in 1st...

Re:That's nothing!

[hawkfish]

Not to mention they gave the same prize to Arafat, but not to Gandhi.

Well Kissinger got the nobel peace price. What a joke, the greatest mass murder in modern history right after Stalin.
Kissinger should be rotting in a prison alongside his prize.

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize."
    -- Tom Lehrer,

Re:That's nothing!

[david_thornley]

How many people did he kill? I think he's still behind Stalin, Mao, and Hitler at least.

Re:ffs

[MetalliQaZ]

Wow they should be lit on fire.

Blue LEDs deserve only one award: Worst fucking idea ever. Here, let's put this HORRIBLY annoying and bright shit on car headlights. What could possibly go wrong?

Dude needs to go take their nobel because its his.

You're a fool. You have issues with certain design choices that you blame on the blue LED? To use a car analogy, that's like blaming Toyota's braking issues on the invention of disc brakes. Disc brakes are a good thing, like blue LEDs. You like Blu-rays? Then you're using this technology.

I'd think he would be pleased

[Anonymous Coward]

Given some of the peace prize awards from those folks.

Not the first time: Cabibbo

[Roger W Moore]

Sure, but what if a red LED is a natural evolution while blue LED, once thought impossible is the true revolutionary idea?

Apparently it still doesn't matter. A few years ago they awarded the prize to Kobayashi and Maskawa for the 3x3 quark mixing matrix and yet ignored Cabibbo who did the groundbreaking work to show that quarks mixed for the first time. The extension to 3 generations was a direct extension of that work and the matrix is even called the 'CKM' matrix after all three of them...but no Nobel for Cabibbo.

While questionable decisions are always part of any award process the Nobel prize is running into some real issues with modern physics. For a start it is almost impossible to award a prize for any recent experimental particle physics result (the recent Higgs prize was for the theory, not the experimental discovery) simply because we work in large groups and you generally can not point to three, or fewer, people and say that they did it. The only exception I can think of to this would be the SNO solar neutrino result.

However it is not just particle physics: 'Big Science' is spreading to other areas as well with the addition of accelerator-based light sources for some condensed matter physics, large scale plasma and fusion experiments etc. The part of the experimental field to which a Nobel prize can be awarded in physics is continuously shrinking making the prize less and less relevant...although it still has a long way to go before it gets knocked off its perch!

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[HornWumpus]

Nobel prize for the LHC. Every participant gets $3.50, a tuxedo t-shirt, a certificate suitable for framing (but no frame) and coupons to see the Norwegian national orchestra, half price.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[rahvin112]

We all stand on the shoulders of Giants.

We shouldn't be looking backwards to the basis of every invention because that's pretty much an infinite chain backwards. The should be awarding the prize for revolutionary work that dramatically advances a discipline. The Blue LED was revolutionary. Without it we wouldn't have LED lighting or even White LED's. It also wasn't easy to find the right makeup to generate blue. Lots of people were working on this for several decades and these are the guys that succeeded. IMO an award for something that took decades to invent with millions of dollars and dozens of researchers working on it is worthy of a Nobel because the solution was clearly non-trivial.

Now maybe they should give this guy a Nobel as well or make him a part of the prize but LEDs were not that revolutionary (as in remaking society) as inventing the blue LED was. Blue LED's changed the world, the invention of the LED laid the groundwork for that but without Blue LED's we wouldn't have LED lighting (unless it was green or red lighting), and IMO billions of dollars of R&D wouldn't have been poured into advancing LED's without Blue.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[Anonymous Coward]

They want to give it to non europeans.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[Alomex]

Again, I'm no expert but I understand that pushing existing infrared LEDs into the visible part of the spectrum as done by Nick Holonyak was considered evolutionary engineering, whereas people thought (incorrectly as we know now) that there were theoretical limits forbidding blue LEDs. This is why their work is considered revolutionary and Nobel-prize worthy.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[radtea]

A few years ago they awarded the prize to Kobayashi and Maskawa for the 3x3 quark mixing matrix and yet ignored Cabibbo who did the groundbreaking work to show that quarks mixed for the first time.

Another comparable case is the awarding of the 1998 prize to Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger for the discovery of the muon neutrino when Reines had not been award the prize for the discovery of the electron neutrino. In that case, thankfully, Reines was finally given the prize in 1995.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[shutdown -p now]

The Blue LED was revolutionary. Without it we wouldn't have LED lighting or even White LED's.

Look, the Nobel physics prize is not supposed to be given on the basis of "social impact" of the discovery.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobel prize for the LHC. Every participant gets $3.50, a tuxedo t-shirt, a certificate suitable for framing (but no frame) and coupons to see the Norwegian national orchestra, half price.

Second place was 2 coupons to see the Norwegian national orchestra, half price.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[Shinobi]

Actually, according to the rules of the Prize, as laid down in the will and testament, yes, it is supposed to. Nobel did NOT want to award only "pure" theoretical science, he wanted to award those scientists and engineers who actively helped mankind. The language of the will and testament is VERY clear and specific, and a common goal for all the Prize is for the practical betterment of mankind and society.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[Anonymous Coward]

Look here, the radio changed the world. The telephone changed the world. The automobile and transistor changed the world.

Blue LEDs did not change the world.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[Quantum gravity]

Yes, and while most prizes are for discoveries, like the Higgs boson, Alfred Nobel stated that the prize could also be given for an important invention in physics.

Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo

[qvatch]

Do you have the dates backwards, or is this another 'quantum' thing?

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[wiredlogic]

toxic stress to the retina

Sounds like they get their medical advice from Dr. Oz. I wouldn't take any such BS seriously.

Seems to me he has a point!

[King_TJ]

It's not that I think you necessarily have to give the prize to the inventor of the "base" idea all the time, as opposed to someone who made it truly useful and beneficial for the masses. But as this article even states, the infrared LED was developed first. Holonyak simply made the first VISIBLE light LED. The infrared LED is a pretty cool invention in and of itself, but the ability to produce visible light with one is what really made people start using them in place of traditional incandescent bulbs.

In my mind, that's the primarily impact the LED has had on people, and therefore is most deserving of the Nobel.

The blue LED? That's a pretty cool innovation, but I don't see how you can award a prize like this for it when you ignored the research that made LEDs possible as visible light sources?

Re:Seems to me he has a point!

[Shinobi]

Holonyaks research was just an immediate continuation of the infrared LED research. The blue LED otoh required a lot of fundamental materials research etc before the foundation to start actually trying to build them was in place...

Re:Seems to me he has a point!

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue LEDs is what finally made it possible to replace CFLs with LED. Up until then it was a practical thing to use instead of indicator lamps. It's pretty clear that the step to blue LED benefits humanity more.

Let me be the first to say

[NotFamous]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH - I hear the whambulance coming. Do you want some cheese with that wine?

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Noah Haders]

dude pick a meme. here that sound? it's the worlds tiniest violin playing a maudlin song for you.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't cite anything then you're just being a jerk.

Waaaaaaahhhhhh

[gatfirls]

National Academy of Engineering (1973)
National Academy of Sciences,
IEEE Edison Medal (1989)
National Medal of Science (1990)
National Medal of Technology (2002)
IEEE Medal of Honor (2003)
Lemelson-MIT Prize (2004)
National Inventors Hall of Fame (2008)

No one cares about my contributions! :(

Re:Waaaaaaahhhhhh

[ColdWetDog]

Show us your Emmy or Oscar, then we'll talk.

Re:Waaaaaaahhhhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOOOOOOSH!

Thoe are Holonyak's recognitions for his work on visible light LEDs! He is recognized enough and shouldn't whine about not getting a Nobel. Geeez, people can't read anymore or something?

ffs

[Anonymous Coward]

First, The blue-tinted headlights you see everywhere are Xenon, not LED.

Second, I'm pretty sure one of the purposes of a car headlight is to allow people driving the car can see where they are going. It turns out that that brighter lights actually help with that.

Finally, Audi recently demonstrated actual LED headlights that are made up of dozens of individual bulbs and are hooked up to facial detection, and actually dim the parts of the beam that are shining in people's faces.

It's since most of the world = rigjobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Paid for by lobbyists and what not.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[MetalliQaZ]

I'm not sure how you can diminish the achievement of someone's invention because other people use it in a way that may not be appropriate. Should the graphene guys not be honored because their invention could be used irresponsibly? (yes, I'm aware of Nobel and his explosives)

Having said that, the Nobel committee did seem to consider the importance of LED lighting, so there's that. Still, I'd think that any danger to eyes could be eliminated with a proper design.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[Noah Haders]

cite an authoritative article that proves that blue LEDs do not cause toxic stress to the retina? next thing you'll ask me to cite an article which proves that blue LEDs will not imbue the user with superpowers and yet superresponsibility as well.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[neoritter]

Or from ANSES a French governmental agency.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[neoritter]

Are the good fellows at Harvard's health department not good enough for you either? http://www.health.harvard.edu/...

Re:ffs

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Funny. Common guys, this can't be serious.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[neoritter]

I agree partly and I don't think you're necessarily wrong with what you're saying. BUT. The point of the Nobel Prize is to award those who did things to the "greatest benefit on mankind." If your invention is hurting people, is it really a benefit to mankind? I think that's a very valid question.

Pointless arguments year after year

[paiute]

The Nobel Prize is an arbitrary award given by a committee with motivations unknown to the public. It is taken way too seriously by everyone.

Re:Pointless arguments year after year

[Shinobi]

Huh? Motivations unknown to the public? Holy crap, then you are uneducated....

The physics and chemistry prizes are awarded by Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien(Royal Academy of Science), whose everyday task is to promote science. In accordance with the rules laid down in the will, they are tasked with promoting science that leads to advancement for mankind. Thus, by necessity, they promote science that leads to practical advancements and not just "pure" theoretical advancements.

The Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine is awarded by Karolinska Sjukhuset(A fairly renowned hospital with a significant research and education division). As above, their task, as laid down in the will, is to promote science by rewarding practical progress that leads to the betterment of mankind, and not just "pure" theoretical research.

The Nobel Prize in Litterature is awarded by Svenska Akademien, whose task in awarding the Nobel Prize is by following the rules of the will, which is in fact somewhat problematic, because if they were to strictly follow the rules, they'd no longer be able to hand out any prize at all, due to how litterary styles and tastes have changed.

The Nobel Peace Prize is handed out by the Norwegian Nobel Committe, which is selected by the Norwegian Parliament, according to the rules set out in the will.

Re:Pointless arguments year after year

[Marginal Coward]

Many years ago, I attended a lecture at my university that was given by William Shockley who received a Nobel prize along with others for their invention of the transistor. It was striking to me how the faculty reacted to him. They were truly in awe, and treated him with something close to reverence. I've always imagined that they received him that way because he received the Nobel prize, not because he invented the transistor, though it's just a feeling.

Shockley was a controversial figure toward the end of his life, including when I saw him, for his views on the relationship between intelligence and genetics, which were (are) considered racist. I didn't know anything about his views about that in advance. But before the lecture started, a group of minority students entered the lecture hall very dramatically and stood in front of the podium with arms crossed, facing the audience, staring straight ahead. Of course, they were peacefully expressing their displeasure about his views. A buzz went around, and folks like me who didn't know what was going on soon heard an explanation from someone nearby who did.

Shockley didn't speak at all about those views, and instead focused on the transistor and other appropriate topics. Suddenly, in the middle of the lecture, I noticed that the body language of students who were standing up front had changed. Instead of silently expressing their disdain for his views, their posture had softened and they were listening to his lecture with interest, just as I was. Except they were standing at the front rather than sitting in the seats.

If it weren't for his invention of the transistor - and possibly his receipt of the Nobel Prize - the world would little note nor long remember Shockley's views on the relationship between intelligence and genetics. Which, to be honest, seem kindda dumb for a man of his breeding.

Re:Pointless arguments year after year

[nashv]

You need to understand that the Nobel Peace prize is a very different thing, compared to the Nobel prizes for sciences and economics.

Re:Pointless arguments year after year

[vovin]

Absolutely, after all correlation between genetics and IQ is clearly ridiculous. I mean nobody believes in genetics are an inheritable trait, right? .

Re:Pointless arguments year after year

[swedoc]

Actually, the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is awarded by the Karolinska Institutet, which, while located next door to one of the hospital sites, is an entirely different entity.

Re:Pointless arguments year after year

[paiute]

I understand perfectly well what the guidelines are for the awards. Unless you are sitting in with the committee as they make their selections, then their motivations are unknown to you.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[Shinobi]

In that case, you'd never award any Nobel Prize, since pretty much anything can hurt people

Re:ffs

[Anonymous Coward]

The only 'braking issues' that Toyota has are with people who put one foot on the gas, and one on the brake. Oh, and the brief thought of veering off the 'forever pro-American' course by Hatoyama's government, for which Japan was slapped around a bit.

Blue LEDs were the key to white lighting.

[Dzimas]

People keep overlooking the fact that the development of high brightness GaN blue LEDs resulted in the technology becoming a practical replacement for white incandescent bulbs and enabled LED backlighting in billions of display panels. Coat a clear blue LED with yellow phosphor and, voila, a bright white light source that burns a fraction of the energy.

So, yeah, the red LED was a tremendously useful device, but it pales in comparison to the dramatic shift that is underway thanks to the development of affordable white LEDs.

What about that other prize?

[Spy Handler]

I seem to recall a prize started by a internet billionaire to rival Nobel, and he was giving out like $3 million per prize instead of Nobel's $1 million. Can't remember the name though...

Blue was essential to create white light.

[Dzimas]

Seriously? The LED backlight in your computer screen is based on Nakamura's work. Same for your phone, TV and iPad. The blue GaN LED was essential for the creation of "white" LEDs, which are actually blue LEDs coated with phosphor to approximate white light. Same goes for the LED bulbs that are currently replacing billions of incandescent lights around the world in homes, street lights, and outdoor displays.

One of the worst awards ever

[Lawrence_Bird]

as I pointed out previously (and was marked as flamebait) this was a dreadful award. Partly because it totally ignored all earlier work, partly because it is awarding based on "technology" which, though difficult, was incremental. But all of that is being polite. You only have to read the cmte. press release to see why the award was given: politics. What was stated over and over? Saving energy! This was all about the politics of "green" and (indirectly) global warming.

Re:One of the worst awards ever

[Shinobi]

The guidelines for the Nobel Prizes are that they SHOULD factor in practical advancement for mankind. And, in that regard, blue LEDs are a MUCH more critical achievement. Nobel did NOT want to reward "pure" theoretical research done in isolation, he wanted scientists and engineers to actively work towards real-world goals.

Re:One of the worst awards ever

[Lawrence_Bird]

I guess you missed the past 50 years of practical use of LEDs. The original red and green LED's have had a far larger impact on the world - they were game changers. I'm not denying the usefulness of blue LEDs but to call them a critical achievement is to overstate the case.

Re:ffs

[operagost]

Besides, the "annoying and bright" part tells me he's actually complaining about HIDs. LED lights are far less annoying.

Re:ffs

[itsdapead]

Second, I'm pretty sure one of the purposes of a car headlight is to allow people driving the car can see where they are going. It turns out that that brighter lights actually help with that.

...but at the expense of dazzling all the other motorists, mucking up their night vision and creating distracting blue flashes in people's rear-view mirrors (due to the colour and small size, I guess - if the road is bumpy and there's a car with xenons behind me I keep thinking I've got a cop car or ambulance on my tail).

If they just used them for main beam it would be OK - they're too bright, and too concentrated to be used for "dipped" beams.

Finally, Audi recently demonstrated actual LED headlights that are made up of dozens of individual bulbs and are hooked up to facial detection, and actually dim the parts of the beam that are shining in people's faces.

Oh terrific. I'm sure that will work at least 70% of the time outside of a demo. :-(

Markup

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It apparently costs YOU tens of thousands of dollars because of markup. (your idea of imported).
Technology cost is more about how many hands it passes through. North Korea borders China.

The white led dies are fraction of cents, package them and they become cents, put them in an arrays for 10 cents, build a bulb for about a dollar, sell the bulb to local distributor for 2 dollars, importer buys from distributor for 4 dollars, distributor sells to store for 8 dollars, you buy from store for $16 with tax.

Not about wars

[Anonymous Coward]

I assumed he got the prize because his election was a step towards global racial harmony; him being the first black president of a previously slave owning country.

Re:Not about wars

[Elbart]

Mandela had that covered.

Could we cut the crap on the "Father" of the LED

[davidpbraunstein]

Could we cut the crap on the "Father" of the LED. Holonyak developed the VISIBLE LED. He would not have developed the visible LED, with the previous work on the infrared. Just like the maser preceded the laser. From my comment on the NYTIMES http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.... "As others have mentioned below, great inventions in science are not invented in a vacuum, but built on the work of many others. Before Dr. Holonyak, Dr. Rubin Braunstein of RCA first observed infrared emission from III-V compounds, and later Dr. Robert Biard patented the first infrared LED at Texas instruments. They are still alive, and happy to have contributed to the field. (Please see wiki ref below) (By the way Drs Robert J Biard and Rubin Braunstein are still alive and breathing, I talked to Dr. Biard yesterday in Texas, and (full disclosure, my father) Dr. Braunstein in Los Angeles.) Nick Holoynak was not the inventor of the LED he but the visible LED, the infrared LED preceded the visible LED. Why don't you ask Braunsteina and Biard what they think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... From above link: "Rubin Braunstein[16] of the Radio Corporation of America reported on infrared emission from gallium arsenide (GaAs) and other semiconductor alloys in 1955.[17] ....... In the fall of 1961, while working at Texas Instruments Inc. in Dallas, TX, James R. Biard and Gary Pittman found that gallium arsenide (GaAs) emitted infrared light when electric current was applied. On August 8, 1962, Biard and Pittman filed a patent titled "Semiconductor Radiant Diode" based on their findings, which described a zinc diffused pÃ"n junction LED with a spaced cathode contact to allow for efficient emission of infrared light under forward bias.........

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[Wookact]

Harvard says that blue light can mess with your sleep cycle, nothing about "toxic stress to the retina"

Backing brutal dictators--not a bad idea?

[Rujiel]

Backing corporate dictators in their use of state terror and death squads "isn't a bad idea'? 30,000+ Argentinian activists, unionists and political prisoners tortured to death--not a bad idea? Brazilian death squads--not a bad idea? Backing Pinochet as he disappears thousands of people--not a bad idea?

Seems like either you're entirely ignorant about Operation Condor or you're a compassionless wretch. You're saying that to fight Lenin's ghost, we should have broken a few eggs. What a perfect example of first world hubris and thoughtlessness.

Re:Backing brutal dictators--not a bad idea?

[HornWumpus]

In that larger context of pawn wars with the Soviets, not only not a bad idea, but a very good and necessary ideas.

The KGB archives have been opened. It is no longer possible to claim Allende was not working for/with the Soviets. Who were the biggest mass murderers of the 20th century.

Re: Backing brutal dictators--not a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Chilean and very interested in the topic. Care to share your sources?

Re: Backing brutal dictators--not a bad idea?

[HornWumpus]

Google 'KGB archives'. That will get you started.

If you are a leftest, you will reel back as your whole world view is challenged. But it's not like Allende wasn't openly a red.

Re: Backing brutal dictators--not a bad idea?

[Rujiel]

"Death squads were a great idea!" Thanks for outing yourself as a wretch. Hopefully in your lifetime, you and your family can be victims to someone else's twisted ideology, just as you've deemed those civilians to be worthy of torture-death according to your own. If it's good enough for the third world, it's absolutely good enough for you.

Kissinger fanboys censoring the truth?

[Rujiel]

Who the fuck would vote this down? I find it hard to believe that anyone in this day and age is so ignorant about the Nixon administration's murderous involvement in south america.

Holonyak's mistake is...

[DoofusOfDeath]

Holonyak's mistake is that he's missing life's opportunities for happiness and joy, because he's obsessed receiving adulation.

I'm sad for the trap into which he's fallen.

Re:Holonyak's mistake is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh. The Nobel also comes with a sizable cash award.

"The various prizes are awarded yearly. Each recipient, or laureate, receives a gold medal, a diploma and a sum of money, which is decided by the Nobel Foundation. As of 2012, each prize was worth 8 million SEK (c. US$1.2 million, €0.93 million)."

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[neoritter]

My main point was that there are health concerns to blue LED light. If I could read French well enough I'd point you to the ANSES report linked in my original citation.

it's about physics, not invention

[Goldsmith]

The materials physics of creating a visible light LED was mirrored by what was going on in solid state transistor development. It was a great feat, but followed the work being done in electronics.

Before actual demonstration of a stable blue LED, theorists in the materials physics community thought it was impossible. The process to engineer the bandgaps for blue/UV LEDs was new and unique. It was an example of the optics guys being ahead of the electronics guys in bandgap engineering.

All that said, inclusion of Holonyak could be justified. His work was good. But... James Baird (who is also still alive) has a much better claim to the general LED discovery (including the first patent) and would be a much, much better inclusion. For IEEE to do an extensive article on Holonyak, but leave out Baird shows that this complaint is a farce.

This award is not about how great LEDs are in general, it's about the quality of physics the blue LED folks did. Appreciate that the award went to guys who did truly great experimental physics.

As a materials physicist, I am very happy with this prize. This is a very important recent discovery to my area of physics. Nobels as "lifetime achievement" awards are disappointing. It's much better to see an award go to someone who can leverage that prestige into new projects.

Peace and Physics aren't even the same committee

[Ambitwistor]

As others have pointed out, the Peace Prize is inherently political in nature. What should be emphasized is that it's also given out by an entirely different committee, in a different country.

Peace Prize: Norwegian Nobel Committee
Physics and Chemistry Prizes: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Physiology or Medicine: Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet (Sweden)
Literature: Swedish Academy

Economics (not really a Nobel): Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

All about the Benjamins

[Overzeetop]

So he's really just in it for the money. Good; that makes me feel much better.

Re:All about the Benjamins

[Anonymous Coward]

Something is wrong with both of you.

True inventor of blue LED not awarded Nobel either

[Eric Smith]

The blue LED was invented by Herbert Paul Maruska at RCA in the early 1970s using Mg-doped GaN. A different one, using SiC, was invented at Cree in the late 1980s.

He should have invented the blue LED

[dimeglio]

The green and red LEDs were not as hard to develop as the blue one.

At least..

[h8sg8s]

At minimum, he should have been recognized with the rest of them. To snub him this way is disgraceful.

Re:True inventor of blue LED not awarded Nobel eit

[dimeglio]

I believe it was in fact Jacques Pankove but the LEDs they discovered were not very useful. Shuji Nakamura is indeed the one who made them useful.

What about that other prize?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Fundamental Physics prize by îÃOEÃ'Ãà ÃoeÃÃOEÃÃ'OEýÃÃ' (Yuri Milner)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Physics_Prize

ColdWetDog, show us you have some balls

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of running like a whipped dog with his tail between his legs http://ask.slashdot.org/commen...

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[Wookact]

No the main concern is light at night, not just blue light at night. Why are you referencing a report you cant even read anyways? How do you know what it says and in what context it is said?

Re:True inventor of blue LED not awarded Nobel eit

[Eric Smith]

Perhaps. IEEE Spectrum credits Maruska, as do several other histories of the subject.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-...

Maruska seems to have made the first working violet LED. Some people claim that it doesn't qualify as a blue LED, but as far as I know there's no agreed-upon hard distinction between violet and blue. Maruska developed the right materials and process to make it, even if RCA pulled the plug before he had solved all of the problems necessary for commercialization.

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[neoritter]

That's ONE of the concerns.

La lumière bleue, nécessaire pour obtenir des LED blanches, conduit à un stress toxique pour la rétine. Les enfants sont particulièrement sensibles à ce risque, dans la mesure où leur cristallin reste en développement et ne peut assurer son rôle efficace de filtre de la lumière.

I said I can't read French well enough, so it's hard for me to find the report referenced by original link I gave. But because you have no clue what a logical argument is.

https://www.anses.fr/fr/conten...

Re:Blue LED should've never been awarded.

[neoritter]

Left out relevant context from the link:

Les diodes mises sur le marché à des fins d'éclairage sont principalement caractérisées par la grande proportion de bleu dans la lumière blanche émise et par leur très forte luminance ( intensité lumineuse ). Les enjeux les plus préoccupants identifiés par l'Agence concernent l'il : effet toxique de la lumière bleue et risque d'éblouissement.

BTW--why are paid trolls all over this thread

[Rujiel]

Or maybe they're unpaid interns? Given your apparent propensity to take stereotypical heartless machiavellian establishment positions, I figured you'd be able to inform me.

Personally,

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be happy to not be grouped with the likes of Obama.

BLUE LED?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the LED's to give a Nobel prize for, it has to be the BLUE one? As in the most annoying LED color to ever exist?

Message for your friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Please thank your friend for helping advance the evil that is our modern financial system. Due to his tireless efforts and studious research, he has helped throw people out on the streets, rewarded the robber barons with gold, and ruined the economies of countless countries. The suffering that he and his ilk have sown upon the world will be remembered for eternity and I hope that he suffers accordingly in the afterlife.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a mistake to give the nobel price for some engineering effort like LED to begin with.

Who cares?

[jcr]

Let's drop the pretense that the Nobel prizes carry any prestige at all. They've given them to the likes of Kissinger and Arafat, for fuck's sake.

-jcr

And the next Nobel Price

[Anonymous Coward]

Goes, posthumously, to Steve Jobs! Inventor of the Computer!

As proven before ...

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

A good part of how you get a Nobel is similar to how you get an Oscar. Someone works very hard to publicize your work to a voting committee. They vote.

So a Nobel prize, like an Oscar, is a function of two strong independent variables.

Computing coefficients is left as an exercise to the interested student.

Sadly wrong

[Roger W Moore]

Look, the Nobel physics prize is not supposed to be given on the basis of "social impact" of the discovery.

Actually, and sadly, you are wrong and that is part of the reason why it may end up being replaced.