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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.
The Nobel prize is never given posthumously. That's where it stops.
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.
Not to mention they gave the same prize to Arafat, but not to Gandhi.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
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.
You could at least look at the post he's replying to.
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! :(
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.
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).
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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.)
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.
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.
In fact white leds are normally made by a "single colour" LED illuminating a phospor. Not by mixing red, green and blue.
Correction: The Peace prize is awarded by a Norwegian committee, not by the committee that awards the other Nobel prizes.
Bert