The world’s largest prize for technological innovation was awarded this year to Professor Shuji Nakamura, currently at the University of California Santa Barbara, for his development of bright-blue, green and white LEDs and a blue laser. According to the prize website, “The world’s largest technology prize, now being awarded by Finland’s Millennium Prize Foundation for the second time, has a value of one million euros.” Prof. Nakamura’s advances “were things that other researchers in the semiconductor field had spent decades trying to do.”

Says Pekka Tarjanne, Chairman of the International mittee: “The lighting applications now made possible by his achievement can pared with Thomas Edison’s invention of the incandescent lamp. In the course of time, energy-efficient light sources based on Shuji Nakamura’s innovation will undoubtedly e predominant.”

HT: Future Tense (RealAudio)