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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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).

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

[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.

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.

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

[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.

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.