Isamu Akasaki

Isamu Akasaki was born in Kagoshima, Japan, and graduated from Kyoto University in 1952. While red and green LEDs had been developed in the 1960s, scientists worldwide tried and failed for three decades to create a blue LED, which was necessary to combine with red and green to generate white light. While most researchers abandoned gallium nitride (GaN) due to crystal defects and lack of p-type doping, Akasaki persisted alone at Nagoya University and Matsushita Research.

In 1986, Akasaki and his student Hiroshi Amano pioneered metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) with a low-temperature aluminum nitride buffer layer on sapphire, growing high-quality GaN crystals. In 1989, they achieved the world's first p-type GaN and fabricated the first p-n junction blue LED. Akasaki was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Amano and Shuji Nakamura. Their invention revolutionized global lighting, slashing electricity consumption and saving gigawatts of energy worldwide.