I look forward to early October when the Nobel prizes in science are awarded because, for a few rare hours, the international news media pays avid attention to these prestigious prizes and the scientists who earned them. It’s a tremendous occasion to inform the public and instill broader appreciation for science. When members of the general press ask me to comment about the Physics Prize, I try to make the most of the opportunity. Most reporters are working on a short deadline, and they are anxious to submit a brief story that describes in lay language what the prizes are about and why these particular award winners rose to the top of the Nobel Committee’s highly selective list. I do my best to accommodate this primary objective, but if I am afforded a little more time during the reporter’s typical rushed interview, I try to interest the writer in a backstory. The extraordinary journey that the prizewinner(s) travel from their research’s genesis to the seminal events recognized by the prize’s citation is often as remarkable as the discovery itself. For most Nobel prizes, this journey stretches over many decades.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three Japanese scientists: Isamu Akasaki of Mejio University and Nagoya University, Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University (an OSA member), and Shuji Nakamura, who is now a US citizen and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Their prize was for the invention of the blue light emitting diode (LED)—an eminently practical invention that has pervaded all aspects of life in the last decade, from general illumination, visual displays, and optical disks to research tools and medical devices.
Reporters often inquire about the prize-winning research’s impact on society. Last year’s prize was given for the Higgs boson—about as far as one can get from a connection to practical application. The Nobel Committee often recognizes revolutionary, basic research, but it has also chosen to recognize scientific breakthroughs that lead to practical inventions. Two recent examples are the Physics Prizes in 2010 for the discovery of graphene—the 2D conformation of carbon—and in 2009 for the successful development of extremely low-loss optical fibers and high-density charge-coupled imaging devices. Such practical inventions are certainly easier to explain to a general reporter and to the public. That notwithstanding, practical inventions usually represent decades of investments in basic science that pave the usually long and arduous path to the invention. The Nobel Prize rarely represents a discovery that bubbles from the brain in a singular “aha” moment.
The 2014 prize presented an excellent opportunity to describe the journey that led to the seminal invention of a practical blue LED. Drs. Akasaki, Amano, and Nakamura spent decades of their professional lives on a materials science and engineering problem that many thought was intractable—coaxing blue light out of compound semiconductor crystal such as of GaN and InGaN—and eventually succeeding with a device configuration and fabrication techniques that could be scaled to industrial production. Their work built on earlier R&D that started in the 1960s as solid-state electronic devices were just beginning to proliferate with the first integrated circuits involving arrays of transistors rather than single transistors. The first LEDs invented in this era emitted only infrared and red light.
Nearly 30 years of experimentation on techniques were required to deposit precise arrays of compound semiconductor materials such as GaN, atomic layer by atomic layer, in order to perfect the eventually successful structure of these arrays and suitably modify the electronic properties of the materials in the arrays so that blue light could be emitted efficiently and reliably. The practical invention we now can buy as a replacement lamp in our local hardware store, that is 10 times more efficient than the familiar incandescent lamp, contains a blue LED. This invention came about because of nearly a half century of research on the basic physics and chemistry of these materials. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics celebrates this journey in science and also celebrates the perseverance and tenacity of the three scientists who made the journey.
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three physical scientists: Eric Betzig of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stefan W. Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the German Cancer Research Center, and William E. Moerner of Stanford University. (Hell and Moerner are members of APS, OSA, and The Biophysical Society.) Their development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy opened up new ways to examine nanostructures that lie at the heart of biology. For society, this gives us hope for advances in the understanding and treatment of certain diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. Their work was also decades in the making; see Inside Science’s story, 3 Scientists Share Chemistry Nobel Prize for Nanoworld Microscopy.
If you want to read more about this year’s Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, see AIP’s Nobel resource pages that our staff has provided in collaboration with a number of our Member Societies: Physics Prize page, Chemistry Prize page.
The pages also list dozens of papers, many of them seminal papers that describe the original work in AIP Publishing and Member Society journals. All of the articles and conference proceedings listed on the page have been made freely available for all interested parties until the end of the year. Visitors will also see links to some Member Society Nobel resources as well.
The Media Services team sent out a press release shortly after the announcement of the Physics Prize that included a quote from me, and their fast work led to widespread pickup. Among the news organizations that ran the quote was the Associated Press, and the AP story appeared in dozens of newspapers and high-traffic websites across the country—as well as dozens more foreign outlets in countries as far flung as Ireland and Australia. The L.A. Times and Christian Science Monitor also mentioned AIP in their coverage, thanks to the efforts of the Media Services team.
I also note that our page views, likes, and shares from Physics Today’s Facebook page reached all-time highs. In the first few days, views on posts about the Physics Prize exceeded 2.7 million, and views for the Chemistry Prize were approaching 1 million. These counts are another indicator of how this annual prize heightens interest in science.