Isamu Akasaki

Isamu Akasaki was a Japanese physicist and electrical engineer who, working with his student Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University, achieved the first working blue gallium nitride light-emitting diode in 1989, after growing high-quality gallium nitride crystals that had defeated other laboratories for years. His group's success in producing p-type gallium nitride opened the path to bright, efficient blue and later white LED lighting, and in 2014 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Amano and Shuji Nakamura for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which the Nobel committee credited with enabling energy-saving white light sources. He continued his research career at Nagoya University and Meijo University after the discovery, refining high-brightness gallium nitride devices.