No Nobel For Nick Holonyak Jr, Father of the LED

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No Nobel For Nick Holonyak Jr, Father of the LED

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 9, 2014 @03:34AM from the only-the-blue-baby-gets-the-prize dept.

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.

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The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by Calibax · 2014-10-09 03:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
1. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 03:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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...
2. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by Charliemopps · 2014-10-09 03:42 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Yes
3. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by MobyDisk · 2014-10-09 03:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The Nobel prize is never given posthumously. That's where it stops.
4. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by drainbramage · 2014-10-09 03:49 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Everyone but Holonyak.
  
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  No brain, no pain.
5. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by MobyDisk · 2014-10-09 03:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
6. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by geekmux · 2014-10-09 03:56 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  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...
7. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-09 04:09 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  You could at least look at the post he's replying to.
8. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by ceoyoyo · 2014-10-09 04:21 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
9. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 04:22 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
10. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by Shinobi · 2014-10-09 04:30 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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)."
11. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by CanHasDIY · 2014-10-09 04:33 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  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.
  
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  An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
12. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by pla · 2014-10-09 04:37 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
13. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by dj245 · 2014-10-09 04:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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14. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by silfen · 2014-10-09 04:52 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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...
15. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by fnj · 2014-10-09 04:55 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
16. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2014-10-09 05:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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17. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by skydyr · 2014-10-09 05:14 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
18. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by TheRaven64 · 2014-10-09 05:36 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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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  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
19. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by ArmoredDragon · 2014-10-09 05:43 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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?
20. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by JoeMerchant · 2014-10-09 06:22 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
21. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by MattskEE · 2014-10-09 06:45 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  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.
22. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by WhoolaHoop · 2014-10-09 06:56 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  In fact white leds are normally made by a "single colour" LED illuminating a phospor. Not by mixing red, green and blue.
23. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by cyn1c77 · 2014-10-09 07:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
24. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by kanweg · 2014-10-09 07:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Correction: The Peace prize is awarded by a Norwegian committee, not by the committee that awards the other Nobel prizes.
  Bert
25. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by Darinbob · 2014-10-09 07:54 · Score: 3
  
  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.
26. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by KeensMustard · 2014-10-09 08:57 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
27. Re:The Nobel Prize Committee blew it by allcoolnameswheretak · 2014-10-09 10:34 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
Maybe by perryizgr8 · 2014-10-09 03:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

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1. Re:Maybe by timeOday · 2014-10-09 03:52 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
2. Re:Maybe by Shinobi · 2014-10-09 04:05 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
That's nothing! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 03:53 · Score: 5, Funny

The Nobel peace prize winner of 2009 just bombed his 7th Muslim country.
1. Re:That's nothing! by Major+Blud · 2014-10-09 04:05 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Not to mention they gave the same prize to Arafat, but not to Gandhi.
  
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2. Re:That's nothing! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-09 04:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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.
Not the first time: Cabibbo by Roger+W+Moore · 2014-10-09 04:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

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!
1. Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo by HornWumpus · 2014-10-09 04:53 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  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.
  
  --
  John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
2. Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo by Alomex · 2014-10-09 05:46 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  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.
3. Re:Not the first time: Cabibbo by Shinobi · 2014-10-09 06:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
Seems to me he has a point! by King_TJ · 2014-10-09 04:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

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?
Waaaaaaahhhhhh by gatfirls · 2014-10-09 04:19 · Score: 4, Informative

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! :(
Pointless arguments year after year by paiute · 2014-10-09 04:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:Pointless arguments year after year by Shinobi · 2014-10-09 05:31 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.